HAL 0.1 release

[Joe Shaw]

On Wed, 2003-10-01 at 13:39, David Zeuthen wrote:
> On Wed, 2003-10-01 at 01:44, Carlos Perelló Marín wrote:
> > The XML based format sounds better for me.
> 
> Hmm yes.. when embedding python one actually link statically with
> libpython.a. It probably still requires python runtime though.. Haven't
> checked. Well, HAL is a freedesktop project so it's prime consumers are
> desktop environments and applications, so requiring python may be ok.
> But I do see your point..
> 
> Anyone else got a take on python vs. XML?

I prefer XML because it's structured and seems more deterministic.  A
python script could contain all kinds of arbitrary logic, could call out
to programs, etc. and there's no way of knowing up front whether it's
appropriate or not without executing the code.  If you have a rather
simple and strict syntax in the XML, it's much easier to figure things
out ahead of time (on a centralized server, for instance).  It makes it
much more manageable.

(Can you tell I've spent the last 4 years doing software management? :)

And if situations like out-of-memory are important (I've never really
been convinced myself...) then a library gives you a better chance at
catching those and doing the right thing than executing a language
interpreter.  And if I had to pick between glib and python as a big
dependency, I'd pick glib.

Joe