I'm thinking of writing a tool that would aspire to eventually being something a debian sysadmin would like to have around. A very basic tool, no gui required, should be useful for just about any unix-y install, but I want to focus on debian.
It looks like, in order to be useful on a base install, my tool must be either compiled or bash. Okay. My question is, to what extent would I be alienating my audience if I used, say, interpreted python or perl? It seems like perl is required for an awful lot of debian tools. Naturally, I can't think of any specifics right now. I believe that there are various compiler offerings for those two languages, but I don't know if they're solid enough to bank on, and as a user, I really like script tools because it's easy to find the code -- just open up the application's file. Please be gentle; I went to sleep last night thinking, "There are no open source projects I can think of to start that don't already exist in some form,"[1] and I woke up before I was quite finished sleeping with this idea in my head. I'll have to see if it withstands scrutiny in the light of day. Apologies if any of this babbling makes no sense whatsoever. I'm still exhausted, but I couldn't sleep with these questions on my mind. [1] Yes, in many ways, it would be better for the community for me to pitch in on an existing project. But my particular itch right now is design, and while I suppose it's possible to come from nowhere and suggest design changes to an existing project, it's probably not the best way to get my feet wet. Besides, I had decided last night to take the bug-fix approach, but then I had this "Eureka" moment I describe above. Also, I'd like to learn how to build a debian package, and the project I have in mind, at least the core part of it, should bfairly simple in that regard. -- monique -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
