really tired of people using the term “left-pad” in reference to http://crates.io dependency discussions, as the left-pad incident is not possible on http://crates.io by design, so it’s unclear what the term even signifies beyond “dependencies are bad”
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Replying to @hdevalence @Diana_InTheDay
I think the left-pad references "small highly used library that could be part of std" as opposed to "widely depended on library that can be/was yanked"
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Replying to @ekuber @Diana_InTheDay
right, but the whole reason that "small highly used library" was a problem was that it could be removed*, and cargo does not work that way, so that problem does not exist. *using "removed" rather than "yank" because, critically, cargo yanking does not remove the crate
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\u221e Retweeted \u221e
perhaps there are other problems with small, highly-used libraries, but they are not the left-pad problem:https://twitter.com/hdevalence/status/1184590765277765632 …
\u221e added,
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Replying to @hdevalence @Diana_InTheDay
I think the problem is twofold: some people have an aesthetic dislike of small libraries, and the bigger the dep graph in rust the more unlikely you'll be able to consolidate the versions of your dependencies' dependencies. The former is not interesting to me, the later is.
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Replying to @ekuber @Diana_InTheDay
but again, these are not "left-pad" problems, they're specific problems that could have specific solutions, not "dependencies are bad", and they should be named specifically
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It's the name of a pattern. Patterns get named after specific examples all of the time. Specifically, where the pattern is "highly used but border-line trivial dependency." Having a name for that pattern is useful, because it can point to where a dependency tree can be trimmed.
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Replying to @burntsushi5 @hdevalence and
left-pad is not a good name for the pattern. It's a singular incident that I have yet to see recreated somewhere else. Yet we use it as stand-in for a pattern that is not even agreed if we can find a good definition for it.
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Yes, well, naming is hard. I think we should do a better job at trying to interpret what people mean by "the left-pad incident." One meaning doesn't have relevance to Rust, so that can be addressed easily. But the other meaning definitely does and reflects a legitimate concern.
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