Re: [dev] Minimalist software. Should I care?

From: Mattias Andrée <maandree_AT_kth.se>
Date: Wed, 5 Jul 2023 17:22:00 +0200

On Wed, 5 Jul 2023 10:04:47 -0500
Dave Blanchard <dave_AT_killthe.net> wrote:

> On Thu, 06 Jul 2023 00:01:43 +1200
> Miles Rout <miles_AT_rout.nz> wrote:
>
> > There is a page on the website advertising all the many patches available to improve st and dwm.
> > Few if any other software projects provide that these days, and are offended by forks.
>
> Actually few if any other software projects NEED to be patched to provide basic ass functionality, like you know, SCROLLBACK BUFFERS IN A TERMINAL. That patch is an absolute joke, BTW--again, it calls malloc() for EVERY LINE of the scrollback buffer! It takes like a second just to open the terminal with a large scrollback buffer, vs sanely-designed Xterm which starts instantly!

One malloc per line isn't really something to lost any sleep over. And you don't necessarily need scrollback in your terminal — most terminals, including st, do not support splitting to open new terminals, which is an even more important functionally that you don't need your terminal to implement either: tmux and similar software can provide this, and you can make your terminal run tmux automatically. And if the machine isn't used interactively, if it's just a monitor displaying information (surf is commonly used to display Jenkins and similar software), you definitely do not need this. Only having the absolute basics and that patch in those things you personally need is quite nice. And if you want to fork the software, or just study it to understand how the different functionalities are implemented, it's unbeatable. I personally do not have any patches applied to any suckless software, and it works just fine for me. A lot of popular terminals, and st's patches, implement a bunch of features that I really don't have any interest, and sometimes, I don't even think they belong in a terminal emulator, or any software running in it, at all.

>
> There's also few software packages out there (in the sane real world) that actually require you to EDIT THE SOURCE CODE AND RECOMPILE just to change basic options!
>
> Want to use a different font in different terminals for different purposes? Sorry, st doesn't support that feature, or ANY other features, AT ALL, unless you personally write a patch to do it. Garbage.
>
> > The suckless philosophy embraces forks and patches:
>
> Bzzt--WRONG. I suggested a fork of st on this list one time and was violently assaulted as if I was the enemy of mankind.
>
> That is the real world. You are living in a delusional fantasy.
>
> > Ok this is obviously just contrarian trolling,
> > nobody who has read xterm's source code
> > thinks it is any good.
>
> I read Xterm's source code, and I use it daily. It's my most used application by far. I KNOW that it is good. It beats the brakes off the useless, featureless piece of trash that is ST.
>
Received on Wed Jul 05 2023 - 17:22:00 CEST