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DMcCunney · 12-12-2017, 02:27 PM

Not a rant, but more of an eye roll.

One of the applications I have here is Pandoc. Pandoc is a document format converter, written in the functional language Haskell, and can convert most document formats to most other document formats. It's cross-platform, with builds for Windows, Linux, OS/X, and BSD, and can be built from source if a binary doesn't exist.

A poster on the Pandoc mailing list was trying and failing to call the Windows executable of Pandoc on Linux using Mono. Mono is the open source .NET implementation (and MS has open sourced .NET and is a major contributor to Mono), but Pandoc is not a .NET application. Why she thought that would work in the first place is one of life's little unsolved mysteries.

When I asked "Why are you trying to use the Windows version on Linux when a Linux version exists?", I was told she's writing a C# application that needs to call Pandoc, and thought it simplest to bundle the Windows EXE with her C# app.

I said "What you are trying to do can't work. If your program needs Pandoc as a dependency, the best thing to do is state that in the docs, with pointers to where to get it if it's not already on the user's system. Making sure dependencies are there is the user's problem." Her alternative would be trying to craft an install script for her application that would check if Pandoc was installed, and go fetch and install the proper version if it wasn't. I wouldn't want to try to do that...

She agreed that was the simplest solution and said thank you, but I was left shaking my head in wonder at needing to state what I thought was obvious.
______
Dennis

12-12-2017, 02:27 PM	#36
DMcCunney New York Editor Posts: 6,384 Karma: 16540415 Join Date: Aug 2007 Device: PalmTX, Pocket eDGe, Alcatel Fierce 4, RCA Viking Pro 10, Nexus 7	Missing the obvious Not a rant, but more of an eye roll. One of the applications I have here is Pandoc. Pandoc is a document format converter, written in the functional language Haskell, and can convert most document formats to most other document formats. It's cross-platform, with builds for Windows, Linux, OS/X, and BSD, and can be built from source if a binary doesn't exist. A poster on the Pandoc mailing list was trying and failing to call the Windows executable of Pandoc on Linux using Mono. Mono is the open source .NET implementation (and MS has open sourced .NET and is a major contributor to Mono), but Pandoc is not a .NET application. Why she thought that would work in the first place is one of life's little unsolved mysteries. When I asked "Why are you trying to use the Windows version on Linux when a Linux version exists?", I was told she's writing a C# application that needs to call Pandoc, and thought it simplest to bundle the Windows EXE with her C# app. I said "What you are trying to do can't work. If your program needs Pandoc as a dependency, the best thing to do is state that in the docs, with pointers to where to get it if it's not already on the user's system. Making sure dependencies are there is the user's problem." Her alternative would be trying to craft an install script for her application that would check if Pandoc was installed, and go fetch and install the proper version if it wasn't. I wouldn't want to try to do that... She agreed that was the simplest solution and said thank you, but I was left shaking my head in wonder at needing to state what I thought was obvious. ______ Dennis Last edited by DMcCunney; 12-12-2017 at 05:48 PM.