Ian Collins wrote:
> Stephen Hahn wrote:
>
>
>> * Ian Collins <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [2007-03-06 11:16]:
>>
>>
>>
>>> Alan Burlison wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>> The important point is that /bin/kstat isn't the reason perl is in
>>>> Solaris,so it seems a bit backwards to complain that it uses it.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>> I'll bite - what is the reason?
>>>
>>>
>>>
>> I must be tired: you're asking why would Perl have ever been
>> integrated into Solaris? (Because then-Solaris customers asked for
>> it, particularly system administrators, and because the then-Solaris
>> developers wanted it as well.)
>>
>>
>>
>>
> Sorry I should have phrased that better - what essential component
> requires Perl in Solaris?
>
> Could a minimal install be made without it?
>
Probably, but you'd sacrifice some functionality that there is no good
reason to sacrifice, and which would likely be missed even in a
minimized install:
1) command line kstat access (formerly we had netstat -k, but that was
removed)
2) project management (projadd, etc.)
3) psrinfo (which used to be a C program, but someone decided to rewrite
it into perl)
4) lgrpinfo
5) intrd
I strongly fail to understand why any of these programs need perl. I
think at least part of the reason that some of these are provided in
perl is to take advantage of Solaris::Kstat. Maybe we need a friendlier
kstat access method from C? There is already libkstat.
I wouldn't mind taking on rewriting any or all of the above components
into C. (The biggest challenge there will be to continue to support
kstat(1)'s use of Perl regular expressions.)
Other programs that I found in /usr/bin or /usr/sbin (list may not be
exhaustive).
- live upgrade (luupgrade and friends)
- rpm2cpio (who cares?)
- realplay (why?! ... so it can execute "readlink")
- etrn
- intltool
- various gtk/glib bits
- appcert
- aspell-import
- bsmrecord
None of these are critical programs to a minimal install, or even likely
to be missed in such a scenario.
Note that there is one program which probably would have benefited from
being implemented in perl, but is not, and that is "patchadd", which
right now is a ksh script from hell. (Of course, that would require
perl to apply system patches... so I'm not encouraging a conversion.)
-- Garrett
> Ian.
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