> =head1 TITLE
> Use features of portable, free compilers and libraries
[...]
> =head1 ABSTRACT
> There is no sane reason why *nix vendors continue to push proprietary
> compilers and system libraries on their customers when better, free
> replacements could be had for little effort. Eventually, they will
> realize this and start porting GNU Libc and Binutils, contributing
> whatever unique features their current tools have to the GNU versions,
> and shipping these packages with their systems. Perl should take
> aggressive advantage of these programs' features in anticipation of
> eventually not having to support all the other cruft that's out there.
It's completely unrealistic to believe that everyone is eventually going
to use GNU libc and binutils. It's also completely false that the GNU
libraries and tools are better than the vendor counterparts; Sun's
compilers and linkers are considerably better than GNU's for SPARC C code,
for example.
If the glibc versions of utilities are useful and we can provide
replacements for systems that don't have them, that's a good tactic and
should be considered. Use of all sorts of random non-portable and often
ill-conceived features is not. gcc implements all sorts of extensions for
all sorts of reasons; some of them are worthwhile to use and some of them
are horrid mistakes. Some of them are perfectly usable but shouldn't be
used in new code because something else has been standardized (such as
variadic macro handling). Similar things apply to glibc.
Perl should be portable. Perl should make use of the capabilities of its
target system as much as it can while still remaining portable, but Perl
is a software package, not a political tool, and shouldn't be used as one.
And the GNU packages contain tons of bad, poorly-designed cruft of their
own; it's important to not lose sight of the fact that GNU libc *is* just
another vendor library with its own nice features and bad mistakes, just
like Sun's and HP's and AIX's. It has a nice license; that's irrelevant
to porting Perl.
In short, while some of the ideas in this RFC have merit, I am absolutely
100% opposed to the grand implications and its tone and would consider
this approach to be disasterous for Perl.
--
Russ Allbery ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
