xstr, mkstr

[Rodney W. Grimes]

> --------
> In message <31b491de-ac5e-ca0f-5f84-96cfa7c02699 at FreeBSD.org>, Bryan Drewery wr
> ites:
> 
> >On the otherhand I don't see the point in removing something that isn't
> >harming anything, is not worth talking about in terms of size or build
> >time, and is unlikely to need maintenance.
> 
> Source code is a liability, it is not an investment.

Source code is both a liability and an investment, sometimes even
a very large investment of time or money or both.

> 
> If the code is useless and not part of a published API, then it should
> be removed.

Useless is another subjective term, what you find useless I may find
very useful.  API is also probably a poor use of that term here,
none of these have "API", not even your cut(1) or awk(1) below.

> 
> >This argument of "not useful" is a bit subjective. Is cut useful when we
> >have awk? I won't go on.
> 
> cut(1) & awk(1) are both part of the published API, so that comparison gets
> you nowhere.

I'll note that xstr is documented in PSD/make, and has a man page,
making it have an API as much as cut(1) or awk(1).

But, as I said early, lets just shelf all this "lets remove this or
that cause of foo" until package base is done, and then a group of
people should create a documented critiria list of what should or
should not be in the base system, and do a tree wide sweep rather
than have 100+ threads over the next 5 years about this or that.

-- 
Rod Grimes                                                 rgrimes at freebsd.org