Hi Jason, Thanks for all your work on build-couchdb. I had about given up on building couch when I found it, and it made my life significantly simpler.
-- Jim On Tue, Oct 25, 2011 at 4:29 AM, Jason Smith <[email protected]> wrote: > On Tue, Oct 25, 2011 at 6:54 AM, CGS <[email protected]> wrote: > > Hi Jason, > > > > First of all, good job that you thought to share from your experience and > > put everything into a package. > > > > Just out of curiosity, I would like to ask you few questions if I may. > > > > 1. I noticed you put all the dependencies in your project (or at least > most > > of them). Why didn't you use wget (or git or whatever) instead to bring > them > > locally from the projects web pages? > > CouchDB could run anywhere. We should be able to burn a checkout onto > a CD-ROM and install offline. > > > 2. I also noticed you used log files for some processes while for others > > there are no such file (e.g., for icu you used config.log, but you didn't > > add also the the compilation and installation to that log). Is there a > > reason or just the time didn't allow you to add logs for that? I am sorry > if > > this question is not correct, I see that scripting language for the first > > time (I use BASH/AWK/SED and maybe few more for scripting). > > Build CouchDB was debugged into existence. Every feature was made to > solve some purpose at some time. I have not (intentionally) made > anything consistent. I have not worried about architecture or best > practices. Instead, I focus on continuous testing and confirming that > it works on every operating system. Once CouchDB is built, you never > run build-couchdb ever again. > > > 3. And one last thing related to the choice of scripting language. Is > there > > a reason you chose rake or it is just because you feel yourself "at home" > > with it? > > Rake is an excellent domain-specific language for accomplishing stuff. > It is nice for building software because you can mix file tasks (like > Make) and also abstract tasks (like Ant). Rake is based on Ruby which > is widely-available, probably second-best language (after Perl): it is > bundled in the operating system by every Linux distribution and OS X; > and it is very convenient to install on Solaris. > > > Don't get me wrong, my intention was never to criticize your work. I > think > > you did great especially that you shared it with all of us. I am just > curios > > because I've seen different ways to do the same job and I am trying to > learn > > which one is the most suitable for such a job (maybe I will follow it as > > well because I am doing also some sys admin work). > > Totally. Sometimes I joke that build-couchdb is the worst thing I've > ever made; however, to a large extent, it is necessarily complex and > unaesthetic because the job it must perform is complex and > unaesthetic. > > -- > Iris Couch >
