python IRC & Command line

[Andrew Walkingshaw]

In article <3ED24885.6D98232C at engcorp.com>, Peter Hansen wrote:
> So, Jay, Andrew, Michael, and anyone else thinking of posting a list
> of examples:  is there any reason to think that the *majority* of
> the sysadmin code is in Python?  Or can we just take Michael's comments
> as being a slightly over-enthusiastic expression of delight at just
> how much of the sysadmin code really is in Python?

I think it's a bit overenthusiastic, yes: it's definitely fair to claim
that the vast majority of RedHat's in-house-coded *installation* tools
are written in Python, and a reasonable chunk of their in-house *config*
tools. I wouldn't regard these as sysadmin tools - more as an installer
and a bunch of pseudo-userland apps in PyGTK. It's a fair chunk of code,
but hey.

To be honest, I tend to regard "sysadmin tools" as meaning ed, vi, awk,
sed, cat, echo, less, tr, grep and friends - i.e. the usual Unix swiss
army toolkit  and I'm not aware of any of these having been, or there
being any benefit to rewriting thse, in Python. :)

For argument's sake, here's the output of

adw27 at shimari:~ 1013 $
:; x=""; for line in `rpm -qa`; do x=`rpm -qR $line | grep "/usr/bin/python"`;
 if [ -n "$x" ]; then echo $line; fi; done       
redhat-config-date-1.5.2-10
gettext-0.11.4-3
authconfig-gtk-4.2.12-3
up2date-3.0.7-1
redhat-config-network-1.1.20-1
kdelibs-3.0.3-8.3
libxml2-python-2.4.23-1
redhat-config-users-1.1.1-2
redhat-config-printer-0.4.24-1
rhn-applet-2.0.0-28
kde2-compat-2.2.2-7
alchemist-1.0.24-4
libxslt-python-1.0.19-1
comps-extras-8.0-3
redhat-config-language-1.0.1-6
PyXML-0.7.1-6
redhat-config-printer-gui-0.4.24-1
kdesdk-kbabel-3.0.3-2
redhat-config-kickstart-2.3.3-3
4Suite-0.11.1-10
libglade2-devel-2.0.0-2
rhpl-0.51-1
up2date-gnome-3.0.7-1

which suggests much of the RedHat configuration userland, as well as the
installer and Red Hat Network update tools, are Python. 

- Andrew

-- 
Andrew Walkingshaw | andrew-usenet at lexical.org.uk