Re: [Setup-tool-hackers] backends

[Tambet Ingo <tambet ximian com>]

Since noone answered to my previous mail, I'll bug You again :)

We really should make our backends look like perl not like
perl-written-in-c-style. C'mon! No serious perl hacker will contribute,
if it doesn't look like perl... Perl modules is THE BIGGEST improvement
in perl 5 from perl 4.

Check out CPAN archives (www.cpan.org), see how perl modules are
written. We really need to start using perl modules. Our code is getting
longer and longer each day and it'll be harder to convert it later.

I think we could start adding our release tarballs of backends to cpan.
There already are modules in admin category. That's the first place
every perl hacker starts to look for something. We can win many
contributions from perl community!

So, to repeat myself about advantages with this work are:

* perl style
* no need to preffix all functions with xst_filename_
* Show/export only variables and functions which need to be exported
without polluting global namespace
* less error prone: 'use strict;' catches most of lexical bugs/typos
* constructors. No need to call xst_yourfilename_init in the beginning
of every backend and xst_yourfilename_end in the end
* Ability to make our backends public, not just used-by-xst

Don't want to write another too-long-to-read mail, so man
[perlref|perlmod|perltoot] are your friends.

Tambet


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