On Thu, 2005-08-04 at 15:43 -0400, Simon Perreault wrote: > On Thursday 04 August 2005 15:24, seth vidal wrote: > > yes. And it's prone to breaking. > > Handing back data structures against known modules is less likely to > > fall apart. > > > > this is why we have APIs. This is why yum isn't invoking rpm as a system > > call. > > It seems you have missed part of my previous mail. Let me reprint it for you: > > It's not guaranteed to be right, but most of the time it is and the fact that > it's a single line is a major advantage. > > > And it would be a bear to maintain simply so we could be locked down to > > that format, forever. No thank you. > > I don't understand. There is no "format". Do you think "rpm -qa" provides > information in a format, and that rpm is a bear to maintain simply so it can > be locked down to that format forever? > > What I'm thinking about: > > $ yum --script list available > package1 > package2 > ... > > You really think that format would be hard to maintain? > > > It's a question of ease of programming. C is unfun to write in and to > > deal with all the memory issues. Python is easy to write in and the yum > > modules aren't hard to use. Heck we have the yum-utils to show examples > > of just this. > > Let me disagree. It's *not* a question of ease of programming. Shell scripting > is not easy programming. It's a different thing. In the command I showed, > I've combined generic tools that I know about because I use them everyday. It > was possible because the commands were designed with reuse in mind. > Programming is not about combining everyday tools. When I do an "import yum", > I'm in an unknown world. It's two different worlds. > > > Seriously, if you think going down the path to program in python in > > order to produce a scriptable interface to yum - just write the program > > you're after in python using the yum modules. > > That's what I've been doing, but I've been duplicating so much code > from /usr/share/yum-cli that I now think it would be cleaner just just add an > option to add scriptability to yum. > > Anyway, let me hack, produce a patch, and then maybe, just maybe, you'll > actually like it. ;-) no, I won't. we will not be adding screen scraping functionality into yum. -sv
