Re: [Oopic-compiler-devel] Hello from the new guy

[Brian <bri...@po...>]

On Fri, May 28, 2004 at 10:30:38PM +0100, Neil Durant wrote:
> The question of whether we ship tools we don't maintain (eg Python if we go
> down that route, *lex, yacc/bison etc) is a tricky one.  

I'm not aware of any projects that use Python *and* package Python as
part of the distribution (I've not come across any Perl apps either
that do this).  I believe the way to handle this is to (1) ensure
backwards-compatibility as versions of system tool X change, and
(2) specify a minimum version of support for that system tool.

If you start packaging the system tools as part of the toolkit, it
will make it look like you offer support for those system tools as
well.  That is probably a closed can of worms asking to be opened. 

> If someone's
> installing our stuff and already has some of those tools installed, do they
> use ours or their existing ones?  

That's a road we don't want to travel down.  If we do our part right,
it won't matter what version of tools the end user has installed, as
long as conditions (1) and (2) above are met.

Most *nix users would not stand to have system tools installed, and
would probably resist any attempt to do so.  Personally, I would not
want to install any application or toolkit on my *nix or OS X boxes
that required me to use the system tools as shipped with the app. 

> Plus, how completely would we support
> platforms?  If we're shipping platform dependent tools (the Python
> interpreter for example, if we use Python) then we could potentially be
> shipping a dozen different ones (for different Linux distributions,
> FreeBSD, etc etc).

You can't hold everyone's hands.  The end user must take some
responsiblity for making sure their system tools support the toolkit.
We can help through the installation process to identify deficiencies
a particular system may have, and direct the end user to where they
can obtain the system tools necessary for the toolkit.

  --Brian