From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id ; Fri, 18 May 2001 14:26:51 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id ; Fri, 18 May 2001 14:26:41 -0400 Received: from snark.tuxedo.org ([207.106.50.26]:26633 "EHLO snark.thyrsus.com") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id ; Fri, 18 May 2001 14:26:29 -0400 Date: Fri, 18 May 2001 14:25:08 -0400 From: "Eric S. Raymond" To: Alan Cox Cc: Keith Owens , CML2 , kbuild-devel@lists.sourceforge.net Subject: Re: [kbuild-devel] Re: CML2 design philosophy heads-up Message-ID: <20010518142508.B16093@thyrsus.com> Reply-To: esr@thyrsus.com Mail-Followup-To: "Eric S. Raymond" , Alan Cox , Keith Owens , CML2 , kbuild-devel@lists.sourceforge.net In-Reply-To: <20010518123413.I14309@thyrsus.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.2.5i In-Reply-To: ; from alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk on Fri, May 18, 2001 at 06:33:15PM +0100 Organization: Eric Conspiracy Secret Labs X-Eric-Conspiracy: There is no conspiracy Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Alan Cox : > Do you really believe anyone would be dumb enough to delete them out of spite > or to further your political machinations if they could both handle the same > configuration language. That's a big "if" which I don't think is ever going to happen. The CML1 and CML2 languages are nowhere near semantically equivalent. I know them both intimately, and bridging the gap is a much harder problem than you seem prepared to realize. They look closer together than they are, because you can superficially map individual features between them (CML2 derivations look like CML1 defines, for example). The big difference is subtler, and has to do with the difference between a control language and a constraint language. As a result, there are things you can easily do in CML2 that you can't practically speaking do in CML1. For CML1 and CML2 to handle the same language, we would either have to live with the CML1 language's limitations or retrofit the old tools to speak CML2 language. The chance of the latter happening is, I think we can agree, effectively zero. I know you've talked about parsing CML1 into constraints with backtracking. Maybe you're smart enough to do that. I'm not. I tried that route early on. I predict that if you do, you'll experience a great deal of suffering, acquire a valuable education, and get no good result. -- Eric S. Raymond The common argument that crime is caused by poverty is a kind of slander on the poor. -- H. L. Mencken