[ILUG] bloody redhat!!

[Paul Jakma]

On Sun, 13 Feb 2000, kevin lyda wrote:

  you folks realise that suse uses a similar system of including shell
  scripts that set variables, yes?  last i knew, so does freebsd, openbsd,
  and solaris actually...

Of course. And it's definitely a good thing. I've no problems with
this, or any other way of centralising configuration variables. Eg
/etc/sysconfig on IRIX is a good thing, something I'd like to see
taken further -> a /etc/config directory namespace, with one variable
per file.

My main problem is really with the scripts in RedHat. They are huge
messy bird's nests. Seriously, install a printer with printtool then
go and read the filter script in var/spool/lpd/../. It's disgusting,
especially considering that it's job is just to decide which REAL
filter to hand off to!

Does anyone remember the "Something Level" window manager M4 setup
script hell from RH4? It was nearly impossible to debug, epitome of
how not to do a maintainable/debugable set of scripts. And RH havn't
learned.

I don't know why, but when RH decide to write a set of scripts it
seems their goal is obscurity. Have a look at IRIX or Digital Unix,
the scripts are understandable, logical and you can follow them
without scrambling your brain. And both use centralised sources of
variables.

  as far as complex print filters that make lives difficult, i suggest
  doing a man on printcap.  it's amazingly easy to write your own - i look
  forward to your superior solutions.

:)

Again, printcap is fine. And again, my old RH4 based print filters
were fine aswell. Short, sweat and understandable with the minimum of
effort. Now look at the RH6.1 filters.
  
What i really want is Tru64 Linux. :)

regards,
-- 
Paul Jakma	paul at clubi.ie
PGP5 key: http://www.clubi.ie/jakma/publickey.txt
-------------------------------------------
Fortune:
All the simple programs have been written.