William Stein wrote:
On Sun, Mar 28, 2010 at 3:31 PM, Dr. David Kirkby
<david.kir...@onetel.net> wrote:
William Stein wrote:
Regarding the implementation of that script, you could maybe check for
ls returning an error (or whatever) as above. However, better
would be to write something in Python, e.g.,
#!/usr/bin/env python
import os
# do something with os.listdir()
---
By factoring out this functionality in a script, we avoid awkward
buggy so called "best practices" appearing in spkg-install scripts.
As much as possible, anything that could possibly be replicated in
several spkg-install scripts should be factored out.
William
That's not going to work until python is installed.
All that matters is that Python is installed system-wide on the
persons computer.
It is true that the system needs an install of python, but there may not be one
present. I would assume some of the cut-down distributions of Linux do not
include python. Does Cygwin install it by default?
Why not make it a shell
script instead - it would work before python is built, irrespective of
whether someone has python installed on their machine.
I'm fine with requiring some Python be installed as a prerequisite for
building Sage.
Python is a fine language for writing system/build system scripts.
Several of the Sage components use Perl (NTL and Pari), so some
systemwide Perl is a prereq for installing Sage. Requiring some
Python is just as reasonable as requiring some Perl, which we already
do.
Agreed, though I would have thought perl is more common than python. But the use
of any language like that (perl/pyton/ruby ...) seems a bit of a sledgehammer to
crack a walnut. The overhead of calling python must be much greater than that of
the shell. Couple that with the fact you then add another prerequisite, it seems
a bit pointless to me.
Anyway, it's your decision.
Dave
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