[illumos-Developer] webrev: 278 get rid zfs of python and pyzfs dependencies

[Erik Trimble]

On 11/11/2010 3:56 PM, Cyril Plisko wrote:
> On Thu, Nov 11, 2010 at 10:17 PM, Garrett D'Amore<garrett at nexenta.com>  wrote:
>> http://cr.illumos.org/view/jpj55p64/
>>
>> This work was done by another Nexentian.  The goal is to eliminate the
>> use of Python from zfs, which was "split" into having some percentage of
>> its code written in Python and the rest in C.  (Fixing this is a step
>> along the road towards making python installation "optional" at Runtime.
>> The other dependencies are beadm and IPS.  We're working on both of
>> those as well, and not all distros will use IPS anyway.)
>>
>> Please provide feedback.  The timer on this expires in one week.
> My personal take on this is opposite. I believe system management tools
> are best coded in Python, rather than C. Maintenance is by far easier
> and code is significantly smaller and clearer. Yes, it incurs additional
> overhead of carrying python environment, but when you have it by design,
> rather than by accident (a couple of tools here and there) it becomes
> cost-effective.
>
> I do realize people here prefer having everything in C, so my voice will
> be hardly heard, still I'd rather voice my opinion -
> in the modern computing environment Python should not be considered
> any more optional than, say, libc.
>
> Sounds too crazy ? Well, I thought so as well 5 years ago, when I
> didn't code in Python
It's entirely a rational viewpoint, though, as it turns out, generally 
with only us admin folks.  *Real* developers use compiled languages.

<wink>

That said, one thing we do need to watch is execution time, for those 
programs that are frequently run via batching or scripting. I've seen a 
lot of fingers pointed at IPS being slow due to python's execution 
overhead.  Now, I'm not sure that really was the case, but it is 
something we do have to watch - those utilities where execution speed is 
a concern are definitely a candidate for C rather than python, even if 
it comes at the expense of code complexity.


-- 
Erik Trimble
Java System Support
Mailstop:  usca22-123
Phone:  x17195
Santa Clara, CA