apology

apology

[Sam Steingold]

I guess I should apologize for constantly harping about dependency creep
in gnulib.  No, gnulib is not the worst here.  By far!
I just did "yum install perl-Net-SSH-Perl.noarch" and it pulled 26
(that's right, twenty six!) packages for dependencies, including
perl-Math-GMP and perl-Math-Pari.
That's right, to interact with an ssh client, perl needs to do be able
to do number theoretical computer algebra system.
Can you believe it?!
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Sam Steingold (http://sds.podval.org/) on CentOS release 5.6 (Final) X 11.0.60900031
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Re: need for computer algebra

[Bruno Haible]

Hi Sam,

> That's right, to interact with an ssh client, perl needs to do be able
> to do number theoretical computer algebra system.
> Can you believe it?!

Yes, the dependency list [1] is impressing. I haven't looked why it needs
Pari, but a good candidate is elliptic-curve cryptography. If a package needs
that, why spend 25 man-days implementing elliptic curve arithmetic, when you
can get it immediately, written by a world-class professor of cryptography,
as part of Pari?

Also, the 'factor' program in coreutils could become a lot faster if it were
to use elliptic curves, like Paul Zimmermann's ECMNET program [2], rather
than Pollard-ρ.

Really, computer algebra is located near the bottom of the dependency graph
of large software. Don't be surprised if you need it when inserting a bank
card into an ATM.

Bruno

[1] http://rpm.pbone.net/index.php3/stat/4/idpl/15546485/dir/fedora_1/com/perl-Net-SSH-Perl-1.34-8.fc14.noarch.rpm.html#requires
[2] http://www.loria.fr/~zimmerma/records/ecmnet.html
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In memoriam Jeane Gardiner <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeane_Gardiner>

Re: need for computer algebra

[Sam Steingold]

Hi Bruno,

> * Bruno Haible <oehab@pyvfc.bet> [2011-05-26 21:19:55 +0200]:
>
>> That's right, to interact with an ssh client, perl needs to do be able
>> to do number theoretical computer algebra system.
>> Can you believe it?!
>
> a good candidate is elliptic-curve cryptography.

yes, it turned out that the packages reimplements an ssh client rather
than being an interface to an existing external one, in which case pari
would obviously be not necessary.

incidentally, I was not able to get it working on either Cygwin of
CentOS, using either pre-supplied package managers or cpan.

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Sam Steingold (http://sds.podval.org/) on CentOS release 5.6 (Final) X 11.0.60900031
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