On Sun, 13 Dec 2009 20:42:07 -0400, David Bremner <bremner@unb.ca> wrote:
> On a different topic (and in response to Carl and your earlier
> discussion), as a counter-weight to the desire to avoid dependencies
> (which I agree with), I also think we should be careful about how many
> embedded copies of code there are, from the point of keeping up with
> security problems.  This is probably a bias I picked up from Debian.

Embedded copies of code already packaged in Debian is something to
avoid, definitely. I'm not actively against having dependencies for
functionality that makes sense.

For example, the current libsha1 code in notmuch has been the subject of
a debate about embedded code copies here on the list already. If
somebody would like to maintain that code as a Debian package, then I
would be happy to depend on it that way rather than having an embedded
copy inside notmuch.

For something like JSON output, I really can't see how we need an
external library. The job we're talking about is changing our current
delimiters and then fixing our code to properly quote delimiters
appearing in the content. That doesn't sound like a job that needs a
library.

(Meanwhile, if we were parsing JSON, then I'd be happy to depend on a
library for that.)

-Carl