From: Joost Diepenmaat <joost@...>
Date: 2006-06-10T01:39:25+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby's role in future operating systems

On Sat, Jun 10, 2006 at 12:21:25AM +0900, James Edward Gray II wrote:
> On Jun 9, 2006, at 9:51 AM, Kyrre Nygard wrote:
> 
> >I keep thinking that if all the Bash scripts in FreeBSD instead  
> >were to be
> >Ruby, things would take less code and perhaps even move faster.
> 
> I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss the value of shell scripting  
> languages.  They target a different problem space:  gluing programs  
> together.  It's easy to write shell scripts using redirection and  
> pipes that would be significantly bigger when translated to Ruby.
> 
> James Edward Gray II

Also, some people are wary of having the "core"* functionality
dependent on complex technologies that are in a state of flux. 

It can be pretty annoying if a "minor" language version upgrade 
results in syntax errors all through the core system, while most
shells have had a stable, dependent "base language" for ages.

I seem to remember some distro (I think it was debian or one of
the *bsds) wanted to remove perl dependencies from the base os 
for the same reason. That was a couple of years ago and I can't 
seem to find any reference to that story now.

* core functionality is stuff like: low level system management,
startup scripts and package updates. 

Joost.