Never-ending dependencies.

[prev] [thread] [next] [lurker] [Date index for 2003/08/27]

From: sabrina downard
Subject: Never-ending dependencies.
Date: 19:36 on 27 Aug 2003
I mostly do systems herding, not so much programming.  Which does not
mean that I'm exempt from writing your occasional perl or shell script,
of course, since herding systems without having your brain explode
frequently means fixing brokenness that happens over ... and over ...
and over ... .

But that's not what I'm here to hate today.

During the years of writing my craptastic perl code, I've learned the
joy of reusing code snippets, and of writing my own modules.  I mean,
it's pretty neat -- check that shit out.  Of course, I'm not a real
programmer.

If I was a real programmer, I'd reuse other people's code too.  Lots of
it.  From as many different packages as I could get my grubby little
paws on.  I'd require This, version 1.0pl2rc7; and That, from CVS
please: the latest release is two years old because the team can't agree
on whether to use Widget version 4.2.7b or 4.2.6.  The Widget 4 tree
would be deprecated due to security concerns, though, and they would
recommend that you use 5.1.1, wherein they changed everything.  This
would require GNU m4 and groff because my vendor's wouldn't be good
enough, and That would require a different version of the DB library
than I would have installed for a different package.  And then I'd start
breaking out my project's code into multiple pieces, because I might
want to reuse some of it in other projects.  What other projects? Well,
they're not really done yet.  They're on my whiteboard.  But, you know,
it might happen.  Someday.

But that's *also* not what I'm here to hate.  Mostly.  Well, okay.  Yeah.  
That *is* what I'm here to hate.  But there's more!

You see, if I was a real programmer, I wouldn't actually document all
these dependencies -- I'd just let the unwashed masses find it out the
hard way.  You know, by reading the instructions -- which say "All you
need to do is run './configure && make && make install'!" -- and chasing
down each dependency as ./configure bails.  Or maybe as ld bails.  Or
just for giggles, as 'make install' bails.  So that altogether, what
could have been twenty minutes spent tracking down source tarballs and
then a couple of hours of nice ordered compilation ends up turning into
a day-long hair-pulling extravaganza.  Or six day-long extravaganzas --
but who's counting?

Not that, you know, I'm bitter, or anything.  Oh, no.

Generated at 14:02 on 01 Jul 2004 by mariachi 0.52