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

[Garrett D'Amore]

I don't want to degenerate into a language debate, please.  This is not
about the the best language, its about managing our *dependencies*.

Python, perl, mono, java, C++, ruby and all those other languages have
their advocates, and they each have good and bad points.

However, I will point out some things:

a) each of these languages should be *optional*.  A distro might choose
to add layered software on top, but we should let that be a distro
decision rather than a decision made by the core system.

b) opinions raised by folks who aren't contributing code ... well lets
just say they don't carry very much weight.  I'm of the opinion that
that opinions about the underlying tech should be weighted by amount of
contribution.  That might not be entirely fair, since a few people
contribute a great deal, and a lot of others contribute nearly nothing
besides their opinions.  But I did say at the beginning that illumos was
a meritocracy, didn't I?  Let's see some merit!

c) Anyone who says Python is necessarily easier isn't looking at the
full picture.  We have some 15M lines, the vast majority of which is in
C.  I can code up a fix for a simple problem in 10 minutes just like
they probably can in Python. (If its in Python, its going to take me
*far* longer, because I first have to learn the language.)   Of cours ea
difficult problem is going to take longer no matter which language is
used.

There is an argument to be made that its better to make things easier
for the "proven contributors" than to penalize them in order to try to
lure some hypothetical future contribution. :-)

d) Python will always be required by the *build* system, mostly because
our SCM (mercurial) depends on it.  I'm talking about removing *runtime*
dependencies.

	- Garrett  

On Fri, 2010-11-12 at 15:12 +0100, Ivan Nudzik wrote:
> I see Python bindings/api to ZFS management as a great benefit. Having
> similar ones for resource management (counterpart to newtask,
> dispadm...), network (counterpart to dladm, ifconfig...), IPF,
> zones... and Illumos going to be No.1 choice for many cloud/storage/HA
> systems adopters. We are now in 21st century and there is no place for
> C-mainly approach.... the same as we left assembler-mainly approach
> few decades ago. 'Hard work' has to be done by C and 'the higher
> logic' in productive scripting. It greatly improves solution delivery
> times and stability/security too. Python class of every manageable
> part of ON - ultimately sharp 'swiss knife' from best Unix ever! ;-) 
> On other side I understand the effort of keeping Python interpreter
> build solid and up to date. But comparing to Perl (Mono - there is
> some noise about it), Python takes less time to manage build. If there
> should be a scripting included, Python is the best choice from my
> point of view (and skills with other scriptings).
> And Ad. to comments in thread.... about *Real* developers and 'picking
> 1 language': Real developers are those, who makes the most stable
> functionality on the least lines of code - no matter which
> combinations of langs; speaking only 1 language - it's a sign of
> analphabet nowadays - for example Google separates Java developers
> from "Java developers" by requiring also knowledge of coding in
> Python.
> 
> That's my opinion...
> 
> I.
> 
> On Thu, Nov 11, 2010 at 9:17 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.
>         
>                - Garrett
>         
>         
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