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On Tuesday 16 December 2008 11:12, Neil Williams wrote: > On Tue, 16 Dec 2008 07:57:54 +0000 > > Tom Potts <tompotts@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > I must say it is worrying how interdependent some packages are getting - > > whatever happened to the early Unix philosophy of do one job and do it > > well. > > I blame python. > > More and more python developers think that python is the new Java and > that python apps deserve to work in all environments, so you get a KDE > frontend and a GNOME frontend or a KDE frontend for the 1.1 release and > a Gtk frontend for the 1.2 release. Drives you nuts. > > The early Unix philosophy only really works for command line tools - > GUI tools are converging more and more. It's getting very difficult to > maintain a small GUI installation because more and more of the useful > GUI tools have spurious dependencies so that one app can cope with > varying environments. > > This is something that Emdebian will be trying to tackle - splitting > the KDE frontend away from the Gtk frontend to make new packages so > that XFCE users don't need KDE and GNOME libraries. and back to the original Unix philosophy: something does the one job well - it has a nice api. something else becomes the gui for that thing and talks to the api. the gui should only be there so people can missconfigure it with ease. spurious dependencies tells you its been very badly written. once past version 0.5 or so of something you should be able to upgrade any part without forcing an upgrade of the other. Its not python - its the MS induced 'computing is easy anyone can do it' approach. When you get kids with a computing degree with no knowledge of computer science you know things are getting dodgy... Tom te tom te tom -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/linux_adm/list-faq.html