4 ms·
The Debian base system is much, much smaller. I'm surprised that people consider Python to be part of it. However, APT depends on Perl and the C++ run-time libr
by fweimer 11mo ago
The Debian base system is much, much smaller. I'm surprised that people consider Python to be part of it. However, APT depends on Perl and the C++ run-time library, so those two languages have been part of the base system for a very long time.
- no_wizard 11mo agoI wonder how much of that Perl support is simply regex and other parsing utilities. I’ve notice a lot of that in base OS systems Its a curiosity more than anything though
- rcxdude 11mo agoA substantial fraction of apt is written in perl. It's actually still pretty core to debian, even if applications are using it less.
- julian-klode 11mo agoThere is no Perl code in APT itself, nor in dpkg on the installing side; Perl is used by dpkg-dev, i.e. when building packages.
- rcxdude 11mo agoAh, my apologies. I must admit I am not entirely clear on where the boundaries are between the different tools and other elements of the debian packaging process.
- zahlman 11mo ago> I'm surprised that people consider Python to be part of it. However, APT depends on Perl Pardon? $ file `which apt` /usr/local/bin/apt: Python script, ASCII text executable
- localusr123 11mo agoWhich apt is that? ? file `which apt` /usr/bin/apt: ELF 64-bit LSB pie executable, x86-64, version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked, interpreter /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2, BuildID[sha1]=157631f2617f73dee730273c7c598fd4d17b7284, for GNU/Linux 3.2.0, stripped
- throwaway7356 11mo agoDebian doesn't ship files in /usr/local. You can of course add your own "apt" binary in /usr/local/bin/apt which can be written in any language you like, say COBOL, Java, Common Lisp or Python.
- zahlman 11mo agoAh, of course. I guess this wrapper is provided by Mint.
- throwaway2037 11mo agoI am curious: What does the wrapper do? Can you share the source code here?
- zahlman 11mo agoIt appears to re-organize various apt-related commands and sub-commands (including ones provided by additional distro-specific scripts) so that they're all available as sub-commands of `apt`. I don't do much micro-management so I haven't really thought about what the "proper" underlying commands are, except when I've had to look up specific `dpkg` invocations. It's about 200 lines.
- fweimer 11mo agoSorry, I meant that something in the package management stack depends on Perl (not APT specifically). It looks like in trixie, it's libpam-modules that pulls in debconf, which is written in Perl. And libpam-modules is required by util-linux, which is Essential: yes.