[Mageia-dev] The shiny new Control Center

Sat Sep 29 21:56:04 CEST 2012

On Sat, Sep 29, 2012 at 10:14:03PM +1000, Steven Tucker wrote:
+> 2/ What languages should be available for writing modules? (Perl,
+> C++, python and Ruby are possibilities)
+> 
+>         So far mcc2 has been written in Perl (even though I had
+> never written a line of Perl prior to starting this) so as to make
+> porting existing modules a matter of just replacing the Ui calls,
+> but I do like the idea of allowing the modules to be written in more
+> than 1 language to encourage more contributors who may be turned off
+> by having to learn another language.
+> Sticking with Perl will make mcc2 core easier, so I may do that
+> initially regardless. What do you all think?? Is sticking with 1
+> language preferred even if it means less contributors, or is the
+> goal to attract as many module developers as possible?
+
+MCC is also used for the installation right? IMO, suggest to really
+limit the languages for the following reasons:
+- The more languages used, the higher the maintenance burden
+  (an MCC maintainer would have to know all of those languages)
+  IMO that outweighs the benefit this has for random (one-off)
+  contributors
+- Depending on loads of languages means that you make it more difficult
+  to make changes to those languages
+  e.g. if you depend on Python,Ruby and Perl, it will mean that all of
+  these packages cannot break. At the moment only Perl is the thing that
+  cannot break or have incompatible language changes. Result is more
+  packages to go via updates_testing.
+
+I love Python and dislike Perl... but I don't intend to contribute. I
+find the Perl used in the existing drak tools pretty difficult to read.
+This doesn't have to be the case as e.g. Bugzilla (perl) is in latest
+versions pretty readable (it used to be unreadable). Python also be made
+unreadable if someone goes overboard with classes (over-engineered).
+
+One benefit for going for Perl is that any new code will usually be more
+buggy than being able to copy the existing code.
+
+Suggest to figure out language is most preferred by the potential
+contributors, keeping in mind how much contributions they'd likely do.
+If that choice is not Perl, keep in mind that development will probably
+take way more time.
+
+-- 
+Regards,
+Olav
+