
Lisp, erlang, forth, scheme, prolog, ML maintainer(s) needed urgently in Fedora - fogus
http://rwmj.wordpress.com/2010/07/06/lisp-erlang-forth-scheme-ml-maintainers-needed-urgently-in-fedora/
======
brlewis
The fact that the maintainer of Fedora packages is ready to pass them off does
not mean the software in question is neglected/ignored. One of the listed
packages is audacity.

It just means one individual doesn't have time to maintain Fedora packages
anymore.

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mahmud
Here is how to apply to become a maintainer:

<https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/PackageMaintainers/Join>

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cageface
_It’s a shame these advanced languages don’t get more attention, since they
are clearly better languages than the ones most programmers use day to day,
and would solve their problems if only they tried them._

Or, maybe programmers aren't as dumb as some people think and there's more to
making a language productive than optimizing for 10 line examples?

~~~
eru
They aren't advocating Perl.

P.S. real world device drivers are written Forth. So it's not just optimized
for ten-liners.

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TallGuyShort
_But it’s even more of a shame if people won’t even be able to try these
languages because we lose them from Fedora entirely._

That's really overstating the problem. I've worked with several of these
languages, one of them for quite a large project - and I've never relied on
anything but the language's official site to get the necessary tools. A lack
of maintenance from Fedora isn't going to kill anything.

~~~
oconnore
True, but the number of developers who expect batteries to be included is not
small. And those are the people who "* for dummies" markets to. And when your
manager goes to Barnes and Noble and sees an entire wall of "* in 3 days",
guess what language he is going to pick for his next project?

~~~
eru
Java?

More serious: Batteries included make it easier to get up to speed. It's also
easier to use synaptic as an "AppStore" instead of hunting for everything out
in the web.

Though for languages that I am more familiar with, e.g. Haskell, I am more
open to hunt myself (or install custom package managers like Haskell's cabal).

------
cageface
If anything I'd like to see fewer packages provided as part of the distros and
a cleaner system for installing them separately. I practically never use any
of the installed versions of languages in Ubuntu. They're usually out of date,
broken down into too many sub-packages, over-specified on dependencies, and
unable to play nicely with packages you install yourself via
gems/easy_install/whatever.

~~~
vetinari
They are usually not installed by default (unless something pulls them as a
dependency - can happen for perl or python, but definitely not
lisp/erlang/forth... by default) and they are installed separately. The
situation is exactly what you ask for - they are available for separate
install, right there in distribution repository.

You can also choose - either too many subpackages, or overspecified on
dependencies. You can not have both, for obvious reasons.

Wrt gems/easy_install/whatever, do you realize that these language specific
systems are broken by design and interoperating with them is not exactly easy?

~~~
spacemanaki
Do you have some more information about why they are broken? I'm not trying to
call you out, I'm just curious and don't know much about these systems, or and
couldn't find anything when I went looking for criticisms.

~~~
vetinari
Oh, so you probably missed the discussion between Debian and Rails two years
ago. Have look there:

<http://pkg-ruby-extras.alioth.debian.org/rubygems.html>

<http://pkg-ruby-extras.alioth.debian.org/upstream-devs.html>

The second link describes what is wrong with gems-only approach. See also
links at the bottom of the first page.

~~~
metageek
From the second link:

".tar.gz is the most widely used archive format on Linux. Using other formats
(.tar.bz2, for example) is discouraged, as it requires additional steps for
the packager."

\-- so fix the bleeping package system to support bzip2.

I note, too, that Fedora has rubygem packages, which provide Ruby gems
directly. Is there something rpm does better than dpkg here?

(Not that I give a flip about Ruby; it's a terrible language. I spent about 6
months building an app in Rails; it took about 3 months to go from "this is
easy!" to "but it won't let me do anything hard!".)

~~~
regularfry
> ".tar.gz is the most widely used archive format on Linux. Using other
> formats (.tar.bz2, for example) is discouraged, as it requires additional
> steps for the packager."

> \-- so fix the bleeping package system to support bzip2.

Here you have a point. That's a fairly silly requirement. However, the rest of
the recommendations in the second link are pretty solid.

> I note, too, that Fedora has rubygem packages, which provide Ruby gems
> directly. Is there something rpm does better than dpkg here?

No, it's a policy/politics thing. Gems break the FHS, so Debian pretends they
don't exist. Not knowing it intimately, I don't know Fedora's approach
precisely, but presumably they're either allowing FHS breakage, or patching
the gems to bring them into line.

Patching them is a non-small job; the number of badly-written gems out there
is astounding. I say this as someone peripherally involved with patching them
to make them conform to Debian's standards.

> (Not that I give a flip about Ruby; it's a terrible language. I spent about
> 6 months building an app in Rails; it took about 3 months to go from "this
> is easy!" to "but it won't let me do anything hard!".)

That's a shame - the limitations of Rails are not an accurate representation
of the limitations of the language.

~~~
logic
Details on Fedora's policy on packaging Ruby-related items:

<http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging/Ruby>

