Re: [T(A)ILS-dev] GSoC application: tails-greeter

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Author: intrigeri
Date:  
To: M
CC: Damian Johnson, Tor Assistants, The T\(A\)ILS public development discussion list, tech
Subject: Re: [T(A)ILS-dev] GSoC application: tails-greeter
Hi,

Max. I don't mind cleverness, but IMHO you've been cheatting a bit too
much in your last reply. If we are going to work together, feel free
to cheat as much as you want provided I don't catch you. Feel free to
tell me I'm harassing you with too many questions for you to seriously
answer each one of it, but please: don't send me that quick and
unconvincing answers just for the sake of replying *something*. This
being said, please read on.

> Pretty much due to the reasons described in
> http://live.gnome.org/Vala/About :)


There are dozens of other programming languages' "About" pages that
list their advantages and pretty valid reasons you could choose them
against Vala.

> Also it looks like it will be more fun to work with.


Ah. This I can hear :)

> Another thing - using pygtk add more maintenance burden: to track
> appropriate version, to significantly change build process for gdm
> package (right now there is no pyhton dependency).


Firing up a pbuilder shows that Debian Squeeze's gdm3 package's build
process:

1. Does use Python (one of the package in the build-deps tree is
probably written in Python); I agree this is somewhat irrelevant
since the gdm3 packaging does not need to deal with Python
versionning and dependencies itself.

2. Does not use Vala at all. It seems to me the Vala language is still
evolving, backward compatibility has been broken a few times
between the 1-year-old version shipped in Debian Squeeze and the
most recent upstream one => you'll have to track the appropriate
version and significantly change the build process using Vala as
well.

=> I wonder why you're so damn sure using Python (or Perl, or
whatever) would be more of a maintenance burden than using Vala.

Anyway, you need to take into account that it would be much, much,
much better if you could implement tails-greeter in a way that does
*not* force us to ship a modified gdm3 package.

>> (Perl is the language I would be the most at ease to mentor.)
>>
>> What are the obstacles that prevent you from implementing
>> tails-greeter in Perl? Missing bindings? Binding on CPAN but not in
>> Debian? Other issues?
>>
>> I'd anyway be glad to see what kind of Perl you write; as you do know,
>> there are plenty ;)


> Attached is simple utility derived from some post on some forum. It
> strips off what developers of Psi jabber client mistaken for
> encryption and reveals plaintext saved passwords for all accounts.


> Rather quick and dirty hack but works fine for me.


I'm confused. You told us "I think I'm mostly proficient in C\C++ and
Perl" and the only Perl program you produce (after I asked twice for
it) is a 40 lines script "derived from some post forum". The code is
good, sure, but what do you think I can infer from your Perl skills
and experience, based on this?

Bye,
--
intrigeri <intrigeri@???>
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