[9fans] Announce: standalone libixp

[9fans] Announce: standalone libixp

[Enrico Weigelt]

Hi folks,


I've just finished my standlone libixp package (forked from wmii).

It's an completely standalone package with no deps (beside libc),
provides pkg-config descriptor and shared library. Include files
are installed in their own subdir ($INCLUDEDIR/9p-ixp).

The problem with iounit=0 is fixed by setting it to a constant
value (currently 512) in initfid() if its zero.

An tiny testing client is also included (derived from wmiir).


Available via CVS:

    PServer:	nibiru.metux.de
    Repository:	9p
    Module:	libixp
    Login:	anonymous/anonymous

Feel free to test and use :)


cu
--
---------------------------------------------------------------------
 Enrico Weigelt    ==   metux IT service - http://www.metux.de/
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 Please visit the OpenSource QM Taskforce:
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 Patches / Fixes for a lot dozens of packages in dozens of versions:
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Re: [9fans] Announce: standalone libixp

[Kris Maglione]

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On Sat, Jun 30, 2007 at 05:38:14PM +0200, Enrico Weigelt wrote:
>I've just finished my standlone libixp package (forked from wmii).

There's no need to 'fork' it from wmii, it's always been 
available standalone, the latest snapshot just happens to be 
distributed with wmii.

>It's an completely standalone package with no deps (beside libc),
>provides pkg-config descriptor and shared library. Include files
>are installed in their own subdir ($INCLUDEDIR/9p-ixp).

I really see no need to create a separate include directory.  
There are only 2 include files, ixp.h and ixp_fcall.h (the 3 new 
ones for the threading stubs don't count. There's really no need 
for them).

I really don't see the need for pkg-config either. It's designed 
for libraries that are so insanely complex that you need helpers 
just to build or link against them:

%pkg-config --cflags --libs gnome
-DNEED_GNOMESUPPORT_H -I/usr/local/include/gnome-1.0 -I/usr/local/include -I/usr/local/lib/gnome-libs/include -I/usr/local/include/gtk12 -I/usr/local/include/glib12 -I/usr/X11R6/include  -L/usr/local/lib -lgnome -lgnomesupport -lintl -lesd -laudiofile -lm -lglib-12  

As for the shared object, I just don't see the point. If you 
provide it as a shared object, then people will use the shared 
object rather than statically linking it. I can't see any point 
in that. It's tiny, on purpose, and is meant to be statically 
linked. The only case where I see a point in a shared object is 
when it's used to interface with an interperater, and I'm not 
sure that justifies installing one by default.

Lastly, you wrote a gmakefile.

-- 
Kris Maglione

In a hierarchical system, the rate of pay varies
inversely with the unpleasantness and difficulty
of the task.

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Re: [9fans] Announce: standalone libixp

[Kris Maglione]

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On Sat, Jun 30, 2007 at 12:47:16PM -0400, Kris Maglione wrote:
> I really don't see the need for pkg-config either. It's designed for 
> libraries that are so insanely complex that you need helpers just to build 
> or link against them:

Unless you plan to write some insanely complex library that 
depends on libixp, and thus need a pkg-config file to make that 
work. In that case, it makes perfect sense.


-- 
Kris Maglione

A budget is trying to figure out how the family next
door is doing it.

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Re: [9fans] Announce: standalone libixp

[Enrico Weigelt]

* Kris Maglione <bsdaemon@comcast.net> wrote:
> On Sat, Jun 30, 2007 at 05:38:14PM +0200, Enrico Weigelt wrote:
> >I've just finished my standlone libixp package (forked from wmii).
>
> There's no need to 'fork' it from wmii, it's always been
> available standalone, the latest snapshot just happens to be
> distributed with wmii.

Ah, didn't know of that.
I just took it from wmii and changed it to my needs.

> >It's an completely standalone package with no deps (beside libc),
> >provides pkg-config descriptor and shared library. Include files
> >are installed in their own subdir ($INCLUDEDIR/9p-ixp).
>
> I really see no need to create a separate include directory.
> There are only 2 include files, ixp.h and ixp_fcall.h (the 3 new
> ones for the threading stubs don't count. There's really no need
> for them).

I want to keep things clean and reduce pollution of /usr/include.

> I really don't see the need for pkg-config either. It's designed
> for libraries that are so insanely complex that you need helpers
> just to build or link against them:

pkg-config is an easy to use database to check for libs and get
the right flags and pathes. If evryone would use it, builds would
be much, much easier. Esoteric "tests" (like they're common in
autoconf world) are not needed anymore. Simply query pkg-config.

Especially if you don't have evrything in standard locations
(ie. on crosscompiling), there's no need for laying hands on
individual packages - just tweak pkg-config *once*.

> %pkg-config --cflags --libs gnome
> -DNEED_GNOMESUPPORT_H -I/usr/local/include/gnome-1.0 -I/usr/local/include
> -I/usr/local/lib/gnome-libs/include -I/usr/local/include/gtk12
> -I/usr/local/include/glib12 -I/usr/X11R6/include  -L/usr/local/lib -lgnome
> -lgnomesupport -lintl -lesd -laudiofile -lm -lglib-12

I don't see what's the problem here. It's very easy to use.

> As for the shared object, I just don't see the point. If you
> provide it as a shared object, then people will use the shared
> object rather than statically linking it.

Don't you want people the freedom to choose what they like best ?

There are valid reasons for using shared libraries, ie. not the
need to rebuild applications on library update or saving resources.


cu
--
---------------------------------------------------------------------
 Enrico Weigelt    ==   metux IT service - http://www.metux.de/
---------------------------------------------------------------------
 Please visit the OpenSource QM Taskforce:
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Re: [9fans] Announce: standalone libixp

[Kris Maglione]

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On Sat, Jun 30, 2007 at 07:30:41PM +0200, Enrico Weigelt wrote:
>Don't you want people the freedom to choose what they like best ?

There is no choice involved. If you install a shared library, it 
will be used by default on most systems. Few people know of or 
consider the choice.

>There are valid reasons for using shared libraries, ie. not the 
>need to rebuild applications on library update or saving resources.

Saving resources is not relevant here. libixp is so small that 
the resources required to dynamically link it are greater than 
those required to statically link it. As for updating the 
library without relinking applications, it's of arguable merit 
(and it's been argued here many times).

-- 
Kris Maglione

Never admit anything.
Never regret anything
whatever it is, you're not responsible.

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Re: [9fans] Announce: standalone libixp

[Enrico Weigelt]

* Kris Maglione <bsdaemon@comcast.net> wrote:
> On Sat, Jun 30, 2007 at 07:30:41PM +0200, Enrico Weigelt wrote:
> >Don't you want people the freedom to choose what they like best ?
> 
> There is no choice involved. If you install a shared library, 
> it will be used by default on most systems. 

This realy depends on how the application is built.

> >There are valid reasons for using shared libraries, ie. not the 
> >need to rebuild applications on library update or saving resources.
> 
> Saving resources is not relevant here. 

For me it really *IS* relevant. I'm working in embedded environments
with very limited resources.

> libixp is so small that the resources required to dynamically link 
> it are greater than those required to statically link it. 

Well, if it would be just a few pages, you maybe could be true.
But (at least at my site) the .a is about 100k and the the .so
about 90k large.


cu
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 Enrico Weigelt    ==   metux IT service - http://www.metux.de/
---------------------------------------------------------------------
 Please visit the OpenSource QM Taskforce:
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 Patches / Fixes for a lot dozens of packages in dozens of versions:
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Re: [9fans] Announce: standalone libixp

[Iruata Souza]

On 7/1/07, Enrico Weigelt <weigelt@metux.de> wrote:
> * Kris Maglione <bsdaemon@comcast.net> wrote:
> > On Sat, Jun 30, 2007 at 07:30:41PM +0200, Enrico Weigelt wrote:
> > >Don't you want people the freedom to choose what they like best ?
> >
> > There is no choice involved. If you install a shared library,
> > it will be used by default on most systems.
>
> This realy depends on how the application is built.
>
> > >There are valid reasons for using shared libraries, ie. not the
> > >need to rebuild applications on library update or saving resources.
> >
> > Saving resources is not relevant here.
>
> For me it really *IS* relevant. I'm working in embedded environments
> with very limited resources.
>
> > libixp is so small that the resources required to dynamically link
> > it are greater than those required to statically link it.
>
> Well, if it would be just a few pages, you maybe could be true.
> But (at least at my site) the .a is about 100k and the the .so
> about 90k large.
>

not to troll on you, enrico,
but this thread remembered me of one on the openbsd-tech list.
the situation was: someone proposed a -l option to openbsds ifconfig
just to list network interface names. ifconfig already shows the names
and much more info so the -l behaviour can obsviously be achieved with
shell scripting. at some point in the discussion someone said about -l
being a good point for embedded since it lets you cut off sed, awk and
that sort of utility with the same space argument.
this is what i answered http://marc.info/?l=openbsd-tech&m=115103143012683&w=2

iru

Re: [9fans] Announce: standalone libixp

[Charles Forsyth]

>Especially if you don't have evrything in standard locations 
>(ie. on crosscompiling), there's no need for laying hands on

why wouldn't things be in standard locations when cross-compiling?

Re: [9fans] Announce: standalone libixp

[Enrico Weigelt]

* Charles Forsyth <forsyth@terzarima.net> wrote:
> >Especially if you don't have evrything in standard locations 
> >(ie. on crosscompiling), there's no need for laying hands on
> 
> why wouldn't things be in standard locations when cross-compiling?

Well, as long as nobody has the great idea to pass absolute 
search pathes, an sysroot'ed environment would be fine. 

But there're lots of other situations where pkg-config can help
much. For example if you want to run checks before compiling 
ie. to make sure the lib is installed and is new enough.

And think abouth cases where you don't have standard locations, 
mvcc, etc.


cu
-- 
---------------------------------------------------------------------
 Enrico Weigelt    ==   metux IT service - http://www.metux.de/
---------------------------------------------------------------------
 Please visit the OpenSource QM Taskforce:
 	http://wiki.metux.de/public/OpenSource_QM_Taskforce
 Patches / Fixes for a lot dozens of packages in dozens of versions:
	http://patches.metux.de/
---------------------------------------------------------------------

Re: [9fans] Announce: standalone libixp

[Uriel]

In case you didn't notice, there already exists a hg (mercurial)
repository for libixp: http://suckless.org/hg.rc/libixp

Most of your changes don't make any sense to me, pkg-config is at best
stupid, and shared libraries are plain disgraceful.

In any case there is a 9p-hackers
(http://groups.google.com/group/9p-hackers) list to discuss 9p
implementations and avoid filling 9fans with even more noise.

In any case, I will let kris answer it more detail, but if you have
any problem with the way libixp is packaged maybe you should have
contacted him first?

uriel

On 6/30/07, Enrico Weigelt <weigelt@metux.de> wrote:
>
> Hi folks,
>
>
> I've just finished my standlone libixp package (forked from wmii).
>
> It's an completely standalone package with no deps (beside libc),
> provides pkg-config descriptor and shared library. Include files
> are installed in their own subdir ($INCLUDEDIR/9p-ixp).
>
> The problem with iounit=0 is fixed by setting it to a constant
> value (currently 512) in initfid() if its zero.
>
> An tiny testing client is also included (derived from wmiir).
>
>
> Available via CVS:
>
>     PServer:    nibiru.metux.de
>     Repository: 9p
>     Module:     libixp
>     Login:      anonymous/anonymous
>
> Feel free to test and use :)
>
>
> cu
> --
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
>  Enrico Weigelt    ==   metux IT service - http://www.metux.de/
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
>  Please visit the OpenSource QM Taskforce:
>         http://wiki.metux.de/public/OpenSource_QM_Taskforce
>  Patches / Fixes for a lot dozens of packages in dozens of versions:
>         http://patches.metux.de/
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
>

Re: [9fans] Announce: standalone libixp

[Roman Shaposhnik]

On Sat, 2007-06-30 at 18:47 +0200, Uriel wrote:
> Most of your changes don't make any sense to me, pkg-config is at best
> stupid, and shared libraries are plain disgraceful.

  I apologize if I already had sent it out, but I'm close to putting
a petition out there to ban the shared libraries. I've got a couple
of people signing in already ;-)
  More here:
http://blogs.sun.com/rvs/entry/what_does_dynamic_linking_and

Thanks,
Roman.

Re: [9fans] Announce: standalone libixp

[Enrico Weigelt]

* Roman Shaposhnik <rvs@sun.com> wrote:
> On Sat, 2007-06-30 at 18:47 +0200, Uriel wrote:
> > Most of your changes don't make any sense to me, pkg-config is at best
> > stupid, and shared libraries are plain disgraceful.
> 
>   I apologize if I already had sent it out, but I'm close to putting
> a petition out there to ban the shared libraries. 

A petition ? Addressed to whom ? 

> http://blogs.sun.com/rvs/entry/what_does_dynamic_linking_and

Starts w/ typical, stupid U$ flaming: $what_I_hate is like communism.
Next logic step would be declaring dynamic linking "unamerican".
Well, those ideas are really irrelevant to me. 

To address some of your points:

* Broken compiler: I don't know which compiler you're talkig about.
  Never ever seen such trouble in recent 15 years.
  An clean namespace separation would have done the trick.
  
* Bug vs. feature: with clean development methods, it's really 
  clear what some module should do. First design, then implement
  and test. If you just hack up something w/o any clear spec,
  you can easily run into trouble. In that case: your fault.
  
* Control over shared code: I *have* control over *all* code on 
  my systems. If necessary, I'm able to lay hands on every module.
  Actually this is only rarely necessary. I'm not dependent on
  some "vendor".

* Commercial or half-Commercial stuff like OO: I'm neither resposible 
  for their unability to produce clean code, nor do I care. If I, for
  some reason get interested in such an package, ie. Mozilla, I just
  break off my own branch and cleanup things as I feel its right.
  This includes kicking off all these bundled 3rd-party libs.


Okay, this was alread too much useless traffic on that issue. 
If you don't like my branch, simply don't use it. But please stop
trying to evangelize me, I'll redirect those efforts to 
/dev/null immediately.

We all have our different destinies and different ways of thinking
or coding. IMHO it's best if we try to learn from each other with
leaving others in peace, instead of wasting resoures by stupid 
conflicts.


cu
-- 
---------------------------------------------------------------------
 Enrico Weigelt    ==   metux IT service - http://www.metux.de/
---------------------------------------------------------------------
 Please visit the OpenSource QM Taskforce:
 	http://wiki.metux.de/public/OpenSource_QM_Taskforce
 Patches / Fixes for a lot dozens of packages in dozens of versions:
	http://patches.metux.de/
---------------------------------------------------------------------

Re: [9fans] Announce: standalone libixp

[Roman Shaposhnik]

[ This is mostly offtopic and the only reason I send it to the mailing
  list is the last paragraph. I apologize for any inconvenience ]

On Mon, 2007-07-02 at 02:45 +0200, Enrico Weigelt wrote:
> * Roman Shaposhnik <rvs@sun.com> wrote:
> > On Sat, 2007-06-30 at 18:47 +0200, Uriel wrote:
> > > Most of your changes don't make any sense to me, pkg-config is at best
> > > stupid, and shared libraries are plain disgraceful.
> > 
> >   I apologize if I already had sent it out, but I'm close to putting
> > a petition out there to ban the shared libraries. 
> 
> A petition ? Addressed to whom ? 

  Well, obviously to all sane developers of the world [hm... should
I start using smilies now or is it too late?]

> > http://blogs.sun.com/rvs/entry/what_does_dynamic_linking_and
> 
> Starts w/ typical, stupid U$ flaming: $what_I_hate is like communism.

  I think the level of your insight into how the communism argument
went shows just how much insight you got into the rest of what I have
written. Now, for the record: I grew up in the USSR and I moved to
US in my 20s. I have benefited from both systems tremendously, but I 
also have seen their major drawbacks. Unlike most of the Russian
and American citizens who never travel I have thus been expelled from
the psychological Eden. I had to face reality. The same happened to
me when I discovered UNIX after long journey through the Microsoft land.
At first I was amazed, and only later I realized that both systems
do have shortcomings if engineering problems are tackled by people
who, how shall I put it, have no taste. The important thing to me
is that intelligent human beings are supposed to *talk* about these
things, not just paraphrase Churchill. The point of the title for
my blog article was to relate a frustration when something that is
supposed to be very beneficial doesn't work because reality has
not been taken into account (hey! I'm still angry at good old 
SU for showing me want universal health care and free top notch
education can do for a country and then collapsing!). 

> Next logic step would be declaring dynamic linking "unamerican".
> Well, those ideas are really irrelevant to me. 

  Apparently, they are. Otherwise you wouldn't have had such a strong
and emotional reaction.  

> * Broken compiler: I don't know which compiler you're talkig about.

  Sun Studio, Intel and g++. They all suffered greatly from it at one
point or another. Did you know that chances are you WILL NOT be able
to run a C++ program on a Red Hat 4 if you compiled it on Red Hat 3? 

>   Never ever seen such trouble in recent 15 years.
 
  Apparently you haven't been looking hard enough. But then again, some
people never seem to have any problems with Microsoft Windows security
model either.

>   An clean namespace separation would have done the trick.

  Of course it wouldn't. Please educate yourself on library versioning
and what a mess GNU made out of it. The original Sun's design was
pretty misguided but at least it worked in the world of a single OS.

> * Bug vs. feature: with clean development methods, it's really 
>   clear what some module should do. First design, then implement
>   and test. If you just hack up something w/o any clear spec,
>   you can easily run into trouble. In that case: your fault.

  Wow! I have seen maybe 3 engineers in my life who could pull this
off (has Ken ever needed unit testing). The rest of us are hopeless.
If you are trying to tell me you are the 4th one -- I would have
to wait till you prove it with something real. Before that happens
the statement above is beyond naive. Its dangerously naive.

> * Commercial or half-Commercial stuff like OO: I'm neither resposible 
>   for their unability to produce clean code, nor do I care. 

  An important question is -- are you capable of it?

>   If I, for
>   some reason get interested in such an package, ie. Mozilla, I just
>   break off my own branch and cleanup things as I feel its right.
>   This includes kicking off all these bundled 3rd-party libs.

  Well, I try not to be cynical. May be you are the 4th one. I wish you
luck. You had all the right intentions when this thread got started. 
I also wish that you spend a bit of time looking around and learning
from the mistakes others made. But then again, reinventing the wheel
is always much more fun compared to listening to the old geezers.

> We all have our different destinies and different ways of thinking
> or coding. IMHO it's best if we try to learn from each other with
> leaving others in peace, instead of wasting resoures by stupid 
> conflicts.

  I have said it once and I'm going to say this again: to me the value
of this mailing list is not even so much around Plan9 as it is around
the amount of a collective experience people on it seem to have. This
is pretty much the only place where whenever people tell you that
you're making a mistake -- chances are: you ARE making a mistake. It is
your choice to either listen and learn something or disregard it all
and move on.

Thanks,
Roman.

Re: [9fans] Announce: standalone libixp

[Kris Maglione]

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On Mon, Jul 02, 2007 at 08:50:24PM -0700, Roman Shaposhnik wrote:
>The important thing to me is that intelligent human beings are 
>supposed to *talk* about these things, not just paraphrase 
>Churchill. The point of the title for my blog article was to 
>relate a frustration when something that is supposed to be very 
>beneficial doesn't work because reality has not been taken into 
>account

For what it's worth, I didn't read it as a flame or a rant. I 
actually found it unusually rounded and level headed for a 
composition denouncing something. I enjoyed it. Feel free to 
post more like it in the future.

-- 
Kris Maglione

In a bureaucratic hierarchy, the higher up the
organization the less people appreciate Murphy's law,
the Peter Principle, etc.

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Re: [9fans] Announce: standalone libixp

[Enrico Weigelt]

* Roman Shaposhnik <rvs@sun.com> wrote:

<snip>

> > A petition ? Addressed to whom ? 
> 
>   Well, obviously to all sane developers of the world 

A petition is useful for addressing some issue to some group of 
deciding people (ie. some council). What you need is probably 
some public appeal.

> [hm... should I start using smilies now or is it too late?]

obviously ;-O


<snip>

> > Starts w/ typical, stupid U$ flaming: $what_I_hate is like communism.
> 
> I think the level of your insight into how the communism argument
> went shows just how much insight you got into the rest of what I 
> have written. Now, for the record: I grew up in the USSR and I moved to
> US in my 20s. I have benefited from both systems tremendously, but I 
> also have seen their major drawbacks. 

You played around with typical "communism is bad, and $foo is communism" 
argumentation which is quite typical for what we (@ .de) experience from 
the US (this doesn't mean every US citizen thinks that way, but it's the 
outside presentation of this country, maybe heavily depending on the
current administration). It's just like if we would (in fact many people 
do) call things we hate "facism" (altough we, unlinke .it, never had
large facist movements, insead two pseudo-socialist experiments). 
If you know both systems, you shold not argument in such stupid ways. 
You should be confident to do better ;-P

I don't see the parallels between communistic society and the concept
of dynamic linking, neither on the absolute power of multi level council
goverment, nor an stricly top-down (or V-model based) economy controlling.
>From that view DNS and IP space allocation practises are more communistic
than dynamic linking. 

The only valid point is the radical equilibrium activities which soon
end in the perverted view that evryone has to be equal. Many people seem
to see communism as an symbol for total equality, but that's really not
the concept of communism, just an effect of an absolute communism went
out of control. Such effects normally happen if a few people who are not 
(enough) bound/related to the great majority of the citizens get too much 
power. Christianity showed such bad effects about 2k years before the 
communism (no, in fact, Stalinism) came up. BTW: most people probably 
don't know that on the American contentinen there already was an working
society model which was quite close to Communism, which had been wiped 
out by European (fundamentalistic Christian) invasors in an several 
years taking genocide.

Maybe you didn't notice: your argumentation goes much in an radical
direction, where concepts you personally don't like should be wiped out 
in similar ways as certain religious groups wiped out "incompatible"
philosopies in big "inquisitions". ;-P

We shouldn't act religiously on technical discussions.

To get back to the topic: dynamic linking. 
You raised some good points, where it doesn't work well. Of course
each concept has it's constraints. For my situations it works well,
maybe for your's not. Evryone should have the freedom to choose
individually. I don't think anybody has the right to evangelize or
even dictate his personal view to others.

> I had to face reality. 

My reality is different from yours. Everyone has its own. 
Face that !

For my libixp branch, we both have the choice. I will use dynamic,
you'll use static linking. I don't see any reason for ranting 
against each other. 

One of the major advantages of OSS is: evryone can adopt the 
software for his personal needs. There's no vendor who dictates
how to use the software.

> The point of the title for my blog article was to relate a 
> frustration when something that is supposed to be very beneficial 
> doesn't work because reality has not been taken into account 

I often felt that way, too. Maybe I also overreacted the same
way you did (hard to say it by myself). It okay to canalize the
bad emotions for the moments, but it's not constructive for 
longer terms. IMHO, the only good way is simply to do better
and show the world what you did and why you did it. Of course
many of your ideas can't be done due limited resources. Well,
that's life ;-o

> (hey! I'm still angry at good old SU for showing me want universal 
> health care and free top notch education can do for a country and 
> then collapsing!). 

In .de we have similar problems (of course far not as bad as it 
had been in SU or GDR). The major problem is the inherent conflict 
between marked-based economoy (which IMHO grants the most personal 
freedom) and the concept of social wellfare. Both concepts cannot 
be merged within one system, since they conflict each other.
But IMHO both concepts are necessary.

So my idea is to do both things separately. The component of social
wellfare is to give everyone enough money so he can afford evthing
that's needed for life, including a home, food, clothes, communication,
education, healtcare, etc. It's not very hard to calculate an value
for some (well-defined) group of people within some region on the
current marked prices. Simply give the people that value as an 
unconditional income, just because they're living Human. The really
most of all "social systems" are immediately unnecessar at that point.
The risk of poverty is immediately eliminated (of course people who
are too sick to care for themselves are an very special and rare case,
they'll need further assistance nevertheless). Additionally we need
a few marked regulations for transparencey and reliability of some
fundamental economic good, ie. insurance contracts w/o pitfalls, etc.

Once we have ensured the constraint that evryone can afford all things
important for living, we can give almost evrything to the marked. 
(leaves only a few implementation details to discuss). Most aspects
of what's currently called basic social care (ie. playschool) can 
be done by private institutions. Non-profit ones could play a big
role here.


Okay, the whole political debate goes far, far offtopic for this list. 
I really like to continue this discussion, so I'll offer opening
a new list for that topic.

> > Next logic step would be declaring dynamic linking "unamerican".
> > Well, those ideas are really irrelevant to me. 
> 
> Apparently, they are. Otherwise you wouldn't have had such a strong
> and emotional reaction. 

Not really. My reaction is on that redical ranting.

> > * Broken compiler: I don't know which compiler you're talkig about.
> 
> Sun Studio, Intel and g++. They all suffered greatly from it at one
> point or another. Did you know that chances are you WILL NOT be able
> to run a C++ program on a Red Hat 4 if you compiled it on Red Hat 3? 

Okay, my primary reference toolchain is GNU, I never had to cope w/ RH
and binary compatibility between different distos never had been an 
issue for me. There're many other points which break binary compat,
ie. different calling conventions, heavy CPU optimizations, etc.

But there are techniques for working around them, static linking is 
just one of them. I personally prefer chroot or VZ's.

> >   Never ever seen such trouble in recent 15 years.
>  
> Apparently you haven't been looking hard enough. But then again, some
> people never seem to have any problems with Microsoft Windows security
> model either.

Yes. Experiences are always personal. Everyone should have the 
freedom to decide on his personal experiences and views.

> > An clean namespace separation would have done the trick.
> 
> Of course it wouldn't. Please educate yourself on library versioning
> and what a mess GNU made out of it. The original Sun's design was
> pretty misguided but at least it worked in the world of a single OS.

I'm not talking about .so versioning. This may be working on ABI
changes, where API keeps 100% intact, but makes package managing 
tricky. Instead I'm talking about separating different library 
evolution completely. For example I call gtk-2.x an completely 
different package than gtk-1.x. (they just share the great philophy
and so are quite similar, but NOT equal, and NOT compatible).
Maybe you'd like to have a look at an recent debate @ Gentoo. 
The Gentoo folks don't follow my philosophy (instead ranted 
against me) and so have to cope with great trickyness.

To get back to libixp: 
I indent to give my branch an different name, ie. libixp2 or
libmixp ("m" for metux ;)). So we won't conflict each other :)

> > * Bug vs. feature: with clean development methods, it's really 
> >   clear what some module should do. First design, then implement
> >   and test. If you just hack up something w/o any clear spec,
> >   you can easily run into trouble. In that case: your fault.
> 
> Wow! I have seen maybe 3 engineers in my life who could pull this
> off (has Ken ever needed unit testing). The rest of us are hopeless.
> If you are trying to tell me you are the 4th one -- I would have
> to wait till you prove it with something real. Before that happens
> the statement above is beyond naive. Its dangerously naive.

No, I don't think it's naive. It's very strict, maybe some bit
radical or fundamentalistic. Of course such concepts are teached
for decades, but in practise almost nobody cares about them. 
That's not the fault of the concept, but the people who ignore it.
In other industries, such constraints are fundamental standard,
ie. building constructions or automotive couldn't live w/o that
(or many many people would be killed by buggy systems).

> > * Commercial or half-Commercial stuff like OO: I'm neither resposible 
> >   for their unability to produce clean code, nor do I care. 
> 
> An important question is -- are you capable of it?

Assuming I had enough manpower: yes.
But I can't afford investing several man-month (and maybe also
hire some more devs) in such an project. And I don't have any
reasonable personal interest in it. If there was an investor 
with an adequate budget, we could talk about it ;-)

> > If I, for some reason get interested in such an package, ie. Mozilla, 
> > I just break off my own branch and cleanup things as I feel its right.
> > This includes kicking off all these bundled 3rd-party libs.
> 
> Well, I try not to be cynical. May be you are the 4th one. I wish you
> luck. You had all the right intentions when this thread got started. 

Of course this project runs with an quite low prority. I've got several
commerical projects (have to live from something ;-)) and other interests
(outside IT) on higher priority. So it will take some time to for 
useful results ;-O

> I also wish that you spend a bit of time looking around and learning
> from the mistakes others made. 

Well, I'm now coding for about 15yrs, which give me some experiences. 
And I read several books on development methods (Wirth + Moessenboeck
are always worth a look). So I think I'm confident enough for my
projects :)

> But then again, reinventing the wheel
> is always much more fun compared to listening to the old geezers.

Reinventing the wheel ? Where exactly ?


> This is pretty much the only place where whenever people tell you 
> that you're making a mistake -- chances are: you ARE making a mistake. 
> It is your choice to either listen and learn something or disregard 
> it all and move on.

"mistakes" are often subjetive. 
For dynamic linking, I don't think is generally an mistake. It just
one concept with its pros and cons. Same for static linking. 
Good libraries should support both sides, so evryone is free to 
choose for himself.


cu
-- 
---------------------------------------------------------------------
 Enrico Weigelt    ==   metux IT service - http://www.metux.de/
---------------------------------------------------------------------
 Please visit the OpenSource QM Taskforce:
 	http://wiki.metux.de/public/OpenSource_QM_Taskforce
 Patches / Fixes for a lot dozens of packages in dozens of versions:
	http://patches.metux.de/
---------------------------------------------------------------------

Re: [9fans] Announce: standalone libixp

[Federico Benavento]

good, I like to see that people have political views.

but, the fact that roman used an analogy, and yes analogies
are always fallacious from the logical POV, to make his point
doesn't mean that he's less right or farther from the truth,
or what we, a set of people think the thruth is.

Enrico, so take it as what it was, an advice, which you can
either follow or ignore.

-- 
Federico G. Benavento

Re: [9fans] Announce: standalone libixp

[Jonathan Cast]

On Tuesday 03 July 2007, Enrico Weigelt wrote:
<snip>

> The major problem is the inherent conflict
> between marked-based economoy (which IMHO grants the most personal
> freedom) and the concept of social wellfare. Both concepts cannot
> be merged within one system, since they conflict each other.
> But IMHO both concepts are necessary.
>
> So my idea is to do both things separately. The component of social
> wellfare is to give everyone enough money so he can afford evthing
> that's needed for life, including a home, food, clothes, communication,
> education, healtcare, etc. It's not very hard to calculate an value
> for some (well-defined) group of people within some region on the
> current marked prices. Simply give the people that value as an
> unconditional income, just because they're living Human. The really
> most of all "social systems" are immediately unnecessar at that point.
> The risk of poverty is immediately eliminated (of course people who
> are too sick to care for themselves are an very special and rare case,
> they'll need further assistance nevertheless). Additionally we need
> a few marked regulations for transparencey and reliability of some
> fundamental economic good, ie. insurance contracts w/o pitfalls, etc.
>
> Once we have ensured the constraint that evryone can afford all things
> important for living, we can give almost evrything to the marked.
> (leaves only a few implementation details to discuss). Most aspects
> of what's currently called basic social care (ie. playschool) can
> be done by private institutions. Non-profit ones could play a big
> role here.

And I thought /I/ was the only one.  Have we really gotten to the point in 
political science where sane ideas can be uttered safely in public?

<snip>

Jonathan Cast
http://sourceforge.net/projects/fid-core
http://sourceforge.net/projects/fid-emacs

Re: [9fans] Announce: standalone libixp

[Wes Kussmaul]

Jonathan Cast wrote:

Have we really gotten to the point in
> political science where sane ideas can be uttered safely in public?

They've got it all worked out in Bookland:

http://freebookland.com/constitution.html

Wes Kussmaul

Re: [9fans] Announce: standalone libixp

[Martin Neubauer]

* Enrico Weigelt (weigelt@metux.de) wrote:
> I don't see the parallels between communistic society and the concept
> of dynamic linking, neither on the absolute power of multi level council
> goverment, nor an stricly top-down (or V-model based) economy controlling.

Perhaps, because there are none?  (At least not at the level you are assuming
them to be.) Perhaps you should study literature a little before turning
casual analogies into political manifestos. And yes, I grew up in East
Germany, so I know what I'm talking about. If you take the same shallow
approach to programming, I'll take Roman's point more serious any day.

Re: [9fans] Announce: standalone libixp

[Enrico Weigelt]

* Martin Neubauer <m.ne@gmx.net> wrote:
> * Enrico Weigelt (weigelt@metux.de) wrote:
> > I don't see the parallels between communistic society and the concept
> > of dynamic linking, neither on the absolute power of multi level council
> > goverment, nor an stricly top-down (or V-model based) economy controlling.
> 
> Perhaps, because there are none?  

But declaring dynamic linking as Communism implies that.

> Perhaps you should study literature a little before turning
> casual analogies into political manifestos. 

*I* didn't start this. 

> And yes, I grew up in East Germany, so I know what I'm talking about. 

Me too, so I know both systems. From my grandfather's stories 
also some bit about the third one.

Althouth I think more CS folks should be elected, I don't think
comparing software development models with society models is 
adequate at this level. IMHO useless waste of resources.


cu
-- 
---------------------------------------------------------------------
 Enrico Weigelt    ==   metux IT service - http://www.metux.de/
---------------------------------------------------------------------
 Please visit the OpenSource QM Taskforce:
 	http://wiki.metux.de/public/OpenSource_QM_Taskforce
 Patches / Fixes for a lot dozens of packages in dozens of versions:
	http://patches.metux.de/
---------------------------------------------------------------------

Re: [9fans] Announce: standalone libixp

[Iruata Souza]

dear lord
please please
make people search 'analogy' in their dictionaries
amem