Re: Building the 2021 source release of GnatStudio

[Shark8 <onewingedshark@gmail.com>]

On Friday, July 30, 2021 at 5:51:51 AM UTC-6, briot wrote:
> 
> Shark8 suggested that external dependencies are a bad thing altogether, and libraries like GtkAda and GNATCOLL 
> should never be used.
This is a rather uncharitable take of my suggestion that all dependencies should be, from time to time, evaluated against their benefits and costs.
But I do stand by it: if some dependency costs more to maintain (not excluding things like install/configuration or make/build troubles foisted on the users and maintainers) then it should be eliminated.
I have a rather harsh view of Python itself, especially the tendency to "it works on my computer!" WRT installation woes, that I strongly question if it *IS* "worth its keep".
> This is totally opposite to what people actually want (see the development of Alire for instance, or what happens in all programming languages out there). So that also makes no sense. 
I'm sorry, but *HOW* does a package-manager's popularity (much less existence) negate my suggestion that a dependency's usefulness [and pain-points] should be evaluated?
Just because some package's dependency is well-used doesn't make it a good thing to depend upon, does it? I mean, consider the story of NPM and leftpad: https://www.theregister.com/2016/03/23/npm_left_pad_chaos/