On Fri, Jun 02, 2000 at 09:25:23PM -0700, Jonathan Walther wrote:
> Using Python isn't the kind of "laughing in the face of danger" they
> admire. After all, Python is a wimpy fru-fru Object Oriented language;
> no self respecting kernel he-man would lower himself to rely on
> one of THOSE to compile his kernel. No sirree bob, its gotta be
This thread is ridiculous. We're talking about the tool used to
configure the kernel, not *run* the kernel. Python may be "wimpy and
fru-fru", but IMHO it's no worse than make or bash (with similar
benefits). Sure, it may not be installed on every system, but that's
largely because there hasn't been a compelling reason to have it
installed rather than there being a compelling reason to NOT install
it. "make menuconfig" requires curses, "make xconfig" requires Tk &
Tcl. Big deal. Amazingly, to build the kernel you have to include this
HUGE application that opens up large opportunities for security
compromises called "gcc".
It's trivial to edit a config file with your choice of editor (I'm
sure a CML2-mode will be out for emacs shortly ;-), it's trivial to
compile a kernel on one machine to install on another. Ergo: you don't
need Python on ever Linux box to build your kernel. Eric chose Python
for a lot of reasons, and I think it has some clear benefits
(transparency of scripts is certainly beneficial, as is ease of
implementation).
Give up on this thread, or fork it off on to a debate about why the
kernel shouldn't be written in C because it's too much of a "wimpy and
fru-fru procedural language" which isn't as pervasively installed out
there as /bin/sh.
--Chris
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