[neomutt-devel] which language for object orientation? Was: To fork or not to fork?

Guyzmo z+mutt+neomutt at m0g.net
Thu Jan 26 22:19:21 CET 2017


On Thu, Jan 26, 2017 at 08:01:09PM +0100, Fabian Groffen wrote:
> On 26-01-2017 19:43:23 +0100, guyzmo wrote:
> > […] C is portable across all Unix flavours […]

When I wrote that, I was pretty sure someone would pick it up ☺

> I had to grin when I read this, because elsewhere you were basically
> advocating to screw all Unix and just focus on some recent Linux (+
> Darwin?),

To be clear: I'm not saying "screw all Unix and just focus on some
recent Linux". The other discussion is about C language flavour, and
which compiler would be needed to build neomutt.

The thesis I was defending was that /IF/, and that's a big if, we feel
useful to include some C11 features because it'll be best for the code,
then I'd rather not see the patch dropped or rewritten because of a
strict C99 policy.

So whatever architecture C11 supporting GCC or Clang can spit out and
libc they can link against, it will work on. And as a reminder, it looks
like I was alone defending this, so I guess we won't support C11.

But generally speaking, my position on what neomutt support is what we
can actively build on and test using CI, meaning:

- As tier 1, because of github integration:
    - Linux, mac (with travis) and maybe windows (appconveyor)
- As tier 2, because of no github integration:
    - whatever we can deploy using gitlab-ci: (Open|Net|Free)BSD, Solaris…

So yes, if you want to run neomutt on a toaster with a MIPS CPU, I say
screw this, you shouldn't read your mail on a toaster! ☺ The old 2004
PowerMac and for NetBSD on Sparc64, you'll have to install GCC, and if
you're allergic to GNU, you can still run vanilla Mutt.

> which dramatically reduces your target set to platforms where
> much fancier/safe/cool languages actually DO exist (and you could borrow
> off the shelf implementations of all that mailbox/read/sort/edit stuff).

Yup, that's why I think integrating libuv is a good idea! But I see no
reasons we should get rid of the mailbox read/sort/edit stuff.

-- 
Z


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