Re: scripts/build/scan-mf-deps: script to generate MF dependencies (issue 553700043 by address@hidden)

[David Kastrup]

Werner LEMBERG <address@hidden> writes:

>>> What's the motivation to use Python for all of this?
>>
>> What's the motivation to use sh for all this?
>>
>> You can certainly make it shorter with shell, but will it be
>> significantly simpler, easier to understand or easier to maintain?
>>
>> I decided for Python in this case, because recursion seems like
>> something I don't want to do in a sh script.
>
> I agree with Han-Wen.
>
> Jonas, the rule is very simple: Use whatever you think is best.  A
> contributor invests time and has to make sure that the code works and
> is well-documented.  But why should we enforce a certain programming
> language (of the ones we already use, that is)?
>
> For example, if I contributed a more complicated script, it would be
> written in Perl...

I don't think "Use whatever you think is best." makes a lot of sense for
a community-maintained project.  It ends up leaving the project in an
incoherent state with lots of different approaches that made personal
sense to the person having started them.

Makefiles are an established technique well-known to most contributors.
Recursive python scripts for writing human-unreadable controlling files
in some build system that is the current fad of the year incompatible
with anything else: who is going to maintain that five years from now?

-- 
David Kastrup