Date: Fri, 16 Jun 2017 10:16:43 +0200
From: Natanael Copa <ncopa@alpinelinux.org>
To: =?ISO-8859-1?B?Q+Fn?= <ca6c@bitmessage.ch>
Cc: alpine-devel@lists.alpinelinux.org
Subject: Re: [alpine-devel] Alpine features and the future
Message-ID: <20170616101643.77795057@ncopa-desktop.copa.dup.pw>
In-Reply-To: <20170615200132.GA24181@alpine>
References: <20170615200132.GA24181@alpine>
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On Thu, 15 Jun 2017 21:01:32 +0100
C=E1g <ca6c@bitmessage.ch> wrote:

> Apparently there has been some sort of speculation regarding
> replacement of some components of the system with others, and
> apparently many moons ago last time, at least on this list.

Replacing core components requires a signinficant amount of work. Its
not like we have overflow of resources and look for things to spend our
time on.

So if we replace core components it needs to justify the time spent on
it and the risk of break things for users.

In other words, we don't replaces components just because we can.

> I would like to know Alpine developers' and users' positions on:
>=20
> 1. BusyBox. Does it need a replacement such as sbase/ubase,
> The Heirloom Toolchest, ToyBox or maybe even 9base or Coreutils?

no.

> 2. GNU software. Should it be replaced by analogues? For example,
> make with bmake, bc with heirloom bc, bison with byacc, ncurses
> with NetBSD curses.

replacing GNU make is not a goal, specially if it require us to
refactor Makefiles of 1000+ packages.

we ship both bison and byacc. You are free to use any.

ncurses thoug, I wouldn't mind replace GNU ncurses as I have had some
issues in the past with it. (Headers got wrong so lots of packages got
miscompiled). Before replacing ncurses I want be relatively sure that
it will not break things.

> 3. gcc/clang

Shiz has been working on it and I would not mind replace gcc with clang
as default compiler.

>=20
> 4. OpenRC. Should Alpine switch to an alternative like runit, s6
> or svc? Should /sbin/init be sinit?

openrc sort of does the job, but i'm not 100% happy with it. I like the
ideas behind s6 but find it a bit "weird" (due to djb style) and I find
it bigger than I'd like.

> 5. In case of replacing BusyBox with something that lacks an
> editor, what would become the default? nvi, vim, neovim, elvis
> traditional vi, nano or vis? Or maybe there will be two like
> in OpenBSD or a load as in Slackware?
>=20
> 6. What would be the default shell? mksh, pksh or dash? Or maybe
> bash?

i don't see any reason to replace busybox.

-nc

>=20
>=20
> Thanks
>=20



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