[Cmake] Re: [Dart] cDart anybody?

[Amitha Perera]

On Thu 12 Sep 2002, Ken Martin wrote:
> > not rely on any other program. Yes, most of the systems
> > today come with
> > Tcl,Python, ... but. Please try this just for fun. Go to a remote
> > location, where they have an old Sgi or Sun or something,
> > and you want
> > to setup a Dart client in a limited amount of time.
> 
> A minor correction/clarification since this has been mentioned a few
> times. Most systems do not include Tcl or Python. I would guess that
> at the very most 15% of systems include Tcl OR Python. A better
> statement would be most cross-platform software developer's systems
> have Tcl or Python. I doubt even that most most software developer's
> systems include Tcl or Python. Having been to a few client sites there
> are a ton of windows software developers out there that think UNIX has
> something to do with gender. And there are a ton of "if it doesn't
> come with the vendor's OS it isn't installed" sites as well.

In response to Andy and Ken:

While I understand what you guys are getting at, I think you have to
be careful not to "prematurely optimize".

When talking about old SGIs and Suns: how old are you talking? If
Python, Tcl, perl, or whatever language doesn't compile on it, then
probably standard C++ code won't either. Which means you have to be
careful about what C++ constructs you can use, code in a pre-standard
subset that is generally known to be portable, or use C.

When talking about "not preinstalled == not installed", you are
generally talking about a Windows machine. I think it's relatively
easy to get a pre-compiled binary for Windows from Python, Perl, or
Tcl. (I'll admit I have no experience here, though.) It's unlikely
that a Unix-based system relies solely on vendor supplied programs;
however, you could probably generate binaries for them too.

At a basic level, the Dart client is nothing but glue. And my
experience is that scripting languages are a better glue than compiled
ones. There's a lot to be said about the "system provided" regular
expressions, networking support, etc. Especially when you want to
quickly change a regular expression here or there because the
compiler's diagnostic just happened to change.

That said, there is nothing to prevent multiple clients once a
protocol or file format with the server is well defined. I think this
is the way to evolve Dart. Specify *what* the necessary information
is, and the *how* part is somewhat easier.

Amitha.