Re: Roadmap beginnings

[Tom Tromey <tromey@redhat.com>]

>>>>> "Jan" == Jan Kratochvil <jan.kratochvil@redhat.com> writes:

Thanks for sending this to the list.
Open critique is important.

Tom> based on Python.  From our perspective, Python is the best
Tom> choice because it is popular and generally acceptable.

Jan> This is already your personal bias, it may be worth to design the
Jan> scripting support easy enough to add more language bindings there
Jan> (such as Perl XS).  (I do not track your GDB patches to say more
Jan> about them.)

Yeah.  This is my bias -- though FWIW I personally am not a big Python
fan.

There are two parts to this idea: one scripting language, and the
particular choice.

Why one language?  I think the most important reason to prefer a
single scripting language is that this enables an ecosystem of useful
scripts.

Why Python?  Python is popular at Red Hat and beyond, and is more or
less a critical part of the distro.  I think it is fair to describe it
as the de facto default scripting language choice at Red Hat.

Finally, I think projects that try to be scripting-language-neutral
often fail to be good at any of them.


Kinda OT, but: the choice of Python for gdb has more or less the same
rationale; but there I didn't pick it -- I just picked up Volodya's
initial code, and I think he followed the outcome of a discussion on
the gdb list in early 2007.

Tom