Re: [dev] [dwm] 2000 SLOC

From: Anselm R Garbe <garbeam_AT_gmail.com>
Date: Mon, 31 Oct 2011 12:36:32 +0100

On 31 October 2011 12:14, Connor Lane Smith <cls_AT_lubutu.com> wrote:
> On 31 October 2011 10:59, Aurélien Aptel <aurelien.aptel_AT_gmail.com> wrote:
>> I also think libixp and ii should stay. I don't use them personally
>> but I think they follow the suckless philosophy.
>
> ii does, but since 2007 the originally suckless libixp has been
> bloated up alongside wmii. The repository includes *broken*
> autogenerated manpages, and Ruby interpreter bindings.

The main problem with current libixp is that it incorporated quite a
lot original Plan 9 resources. The original idea was to achieve a 9P
implementation that is fully MIT licensed and completely independent
from any Plan 9 resources.

Apart from this I'm not aware of any other project than wmii actually
using libixp, so from a suckless point of view there is not much
justification in keeping it for its own purpose at suckless.org.

It is also noteworthy to remember that I actually started dwm
development *mainly* because I came to the conclusion that libixp or
9P in general makes it extraordinary more complex to write a simple
tool like a window manager for no really good reason. There are for
more simple ways to "configure" a window manager during runtime, like
the very first libixp that wasn't 9P compliant at all, but more a
command controllable property bag that had some hooks in the very
first wmii implementation. Back in those days Uriel was whining that
this wasn't 9P and that with a real 9P solution we would gain so much
more. In retrospective we didn't gain anything in spending so much
effort into libixp, at least this lesson was worth learning.

Using libixp in any way contains a very high risk in ending up with
much more complexity than necessary. And we have a great show case for
this in our own experience: wmii vs dwm.

This is why libixp does not belong to the sharpened suckless.org philosophy.

Cheers,
Anselm
Received on Mon Oct 31 2011 - 12:36:32 CET