A Generation Lost in the Bazaar • Hacker News Board

Re: A Generation Lost in the Bazaar

#351

Post by rektide » Wed, Aug 22, 2012, 7:56 PM UTC

phkamp wrote: post #50

rektide wrote: post #44

Lambasting libtool for providing a consistent experience across star-NIX is, imo, not the wisest move for a FreeBSDer. Article: This is a horribly bad idea, already much criticized back in the 1980s when it appeared, as it allows source code to pretend to be portable behind the veneer of the configure script, rather than actually having the quality of portability to begin with. It is a travesty that the configure ide…

Why should I as a FreeBSD person not be allowed to lambast the worst hack-on-hack-on-hack-on-hack I have to suffer ? And trust me, libtool is replaceable, all it takes an agreement about a compiler and loader flag for producing shared libraries and you suddenly don't need it at all.

I was quipping that I don't wish to see FreeBSD drift any further away from what unification there is.

My fear is that the awful hack-on-hack-ad-infinitum we do have at least binds us together, even if it is in misery. I'm not at all uncomfortable with replacing libtool, and I'm certain a very good job could be made. But I can hear 18 m68k afficianados crying out in pain that the new toolchain doesn't work on their NetBSD system, or the guy who wrote his own C compiler that needs some extra rules feeling totally shafted because now he was to write M4 and "M5," which for some reason he cannot stand any more than M4 even thought it looks nothing alike.

We stand unified. Not by good things. But by the woe we all suffer. To those out there seeking to crush that & make better, I wish you the best! Please keep in mind a simple mantra as you go about inventing the future, do no harm. Libtool maybe awful but it's how distributions are made.

phkamp, sorry for missing the reply. M4 is ugly, libtool takes forever, everything in it is a hack. It's proven to be an at least adequately flexible hack that has kept *nix unified, more or less. I respect that, but I'm not a systems programmer that gets burned by it on a regular basis either, and I don't mind that my OpenWRT compiles of all packages take 32 hours and it's all libtool's fault.

Re: A Generation Lost in the Bazaar

#352

Post by mikecane » Thu, Aug 23, 2012, 11:23 AM UTC

snogglethorpe wrote: post #318

flatline3 wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Curated package repositories are just a band-aid on the disaster. They improve things by centralizing the ridiculous and unnecessary cost of dealing with the mess. It would be better to simply not have that cost.

Eh? The OP here was lauding the ipad as some sort of "solution" to the "mess," but Apple's app-store is pretty much the purest and most absurdly restricted example of a "curated package repository" around! Debian's (and Ubuntu's, etc) package repositories are a breath of freedom and flexibility by comparison...

>>>The OP here was lauding the ipad as some sort of "solution" to the "mess,"

Note I was not lauding the iPad. I was using it as an example of the kind of Click & Go experience people want. I could have very well said Windows machines vs Linux boxes, because most Windows programs contain everything you need to go without searching for "dependencies."

Re: A Generation Lost in the Bazaar

#353

Post by spartango » Sun, Aug 26, 2012, 7:31 AM UTC

sounds wrote: post #345

spartango wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not I'd like to get on either side of this argument, but I'd like to point out a steady decline in systems and operating systems (both research and teaching) across the academic world. Rob Pike wrote a polemic touching on it, and he wasn't entirely off base. This isn't to say that they don't exist, but there are a wealth of examples demonstrating the transition of major progress in those fields to companies like…

Please, what was Rob Pike's polemic? Can you share a link? From googling around, might you be referring to: "Systems Software Research Is Irrelevant" http://doc.cat-v.org/bell_labs/utah2000/ And there's a little slashdot discussion: http://interviews.slashdot.org/story/04/10/18/1153211/rob-pi...

That's the one, though I prefer this format: http://herpolhode.com/rob/utah2000.pdf

I don't agree strictly with everything he says. It is a polemic rather than a careful argument. But still, he has a point and the data about OS research is strong (even beyond his data).