Re: [CFT] Patch to bsdinstall to support root-on-ZFS and GELI

From: Warren Block <wblock_at_wonkity.com>
Date: Wed, 9 Oct 2013 09:29:00 -0600 (MDT)
On Tue, 8 Oct 2013, Teske, Devin wrote:

> "But shell is nasty; slow; and not as powerful as C" (it depends in what
> context; the first is rhetoric, the second is only true for poor implement-
> ations, and the third may be true in some contexts, but I consider the
> answer to "how maintainable is it" to be a factor in the "power" of a
> language, so don't necessarily consider C to be more powerful than
> shell as the latter is as-or-more maintainable with fewer LoC and a
> higher return on investment; see previous [above] arguments).

My question would be: why are sh and C the only choices?  If the answer 
is "because that's all we have in base", is that a valid concern?

As far as sh, it lacks many high- or even mid-level constructs and has 
real problems with quoting, parsing, and output (2>&1 >&3, for example). 
These make it harder to do things (aka, more code to accomplish a task, 
more code to be maintained, more difficult to modify) than the higher 
level Perubython languages.

In any case, thanks for working on this.  A functioning program in any 
language is better than a non-existent "better" one.
Received on Wed Oct 09 2013 - 13:29:03 UTC

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