[coreboot] an example of bad magic.

[Joe]

I saw a demonstration of infiniband at one of the Linuxworld expos, and it
just seemed over all far too complicated than it needed to be. That's my 2
cents.

Thanks,
Joseph Smith
Set-Top-Linux
www.settoplinux.org

> -----Original Message-----
> From: coreboot-bounces at coreboot.org [mailto:coreboot-bounces at coreboot.org]
> On Behalf Of ron minnich
> Sent: Tuesday, May 06, 2008 4:58 PM
> To: Coreboot
> Subject: [coreboot] an example of bad magic.
> 
> just as a cautionary tale for the goal of moving everything to the
> dts: I am working with some basic infiniband tools. As part of their
> goal of making it all portable and easy to build, they use the libtool
> support tools. So, for a simple command line like this:
> 
> /bin/sh ./libtool --mode=link --tag=CC gcc  -g -O2   -o src/vendstat
> src_vendstat-vendstat.o src_vendstat-ibdiag_common.o  -lopensm
> -losmvendor -losmcomp -libmad -libmad -libumad -libcommon
> gcc -g -O2 -o src/vendstat src_vendstat-vendstat.o
> src_vendstat-ibdiag_common.o  -lopensm -losmvendor -losmcomp -libmad
> -libumad -libcommon
> 
> They need the libtool script, which is
>  wc libtool
>   7363  26779 212348 libtool
> 
> 7363 lines. Geez, how long is the program?
> 
> The program is part of a set of diagnostic tools, and the bulk of them
> are about 200 lines long. So, for a 200-line, 5330 character program,
> we have a 332 character command line and, if that were not enough, a
> 7363-line, near quarter million character script.
> 
> This is a good example of the conservation of complexity. It is always
> possible, in the name of hiding details, to create a monstrously
> complex system that no one can understand.
> 
> Just FYI.
> 
> ron
> 
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