use Perl

• Antiquated concepts (Score:1)

  by Aristotle (5147)

  I think (part of) the solution is something that came up in the hallways of YAPC::EU a couple of times: de-core most of the modules and dual-life everything that can feasibly be.

  Now it just needs to happen…
  • de-core most of the modules? (Score:2)

    by bart (450)

    A net result would be that even more people would be less willing to use some modules. All too often, we encounter the restriction that a solution may not contain any non-core modules...
    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Aristotle (5147)

      There are already many vendors who slice and dice the Perl package. There’s no real guarantee that a module will be there even if it’s “in core” anyway. We would just be blessing the de-facto situation. Hopefully an insistence on code modules only would then become untenable for enough people that maybe someone would finally find motivation for a good module bundling solution.

      As for the places which would still insist that only core modules be used, well, I don’t think we can
      • Re: (Score:2)

        by drhyde (1683)

        Awesome! I'm stupid for trying to make life easy for the rsnapshot users!
        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Aristotle (5147)

          You are making no sense whatsoever.
          • Re: (Score:2)

            by drhyde (1683)

            You said:

            As for the places which would still insist that only core modules be used, well, I don’t think we can protect stupid people from themselves

            Rsnapshot doesn't require any non-core modules, and so has had to reinvent various wheels. Which, I guess, makes me, the current maintainer, stupid.

            What doesn't make sense is removing stuff from the perl 5 core distribution. Although I live in hope that perl 6 will be slim and sylph-like, with only those modules included which are required to easily
            • Re:de-core most of the modules? (Score:1)

              by Aristotle (5147) <pagaltzis@gmx.de> on 2007.10.04 17:20 (#58216) Homepage Journal

              When I say “stupid”, I mean workplaces that could easily install modules but refuse. Writing what’s effectively shrink-wrap software in Perl (ie. rsnapshot has to run on any number of machines, none of which you have any control over) is a very different situation.

              However, even in your case, I don’t know that trimming down the core would be a problem. Are you better served working against a) a large but insufficient core, reinventing various wheels as needed, or b) a minimal core and a good tool to bundle modules into your app? (It might be that we already have such a tool – PAR. But I haven’t used it, and I don’t often hear enthusiastic praises for it, so I don’t know whether it’s good enough to consider the problem solved.)

              Of course, module bundling doesn’t require a minimal core, so my question might seem like a false dilemma. Point is, though: given good module bundling, is the size of the core any concern anyway? Also, don’t forget that vendors/distributors already slice and dice their Perl packages, so you can’t always even on the core. Given that, wouldn’t a good module bundling tool in fact be a better approach than relying on the core?

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