On Mon, 05 Oct 2009, Charles Plessy wrote: > As a user I strongly dislike to have to edit my scripts and command > line sessions in order to make them usable for my colleagues, and I > would be very annoyed if the first thing to do after installing a > package would be to check if I have to change the PATH environment > variable in my current sessions and my logins scripts.
The error here is upstream. Using language extensions in programs that are part of a public API is wrong, and shouldn't be done. Fixing the bug in Debian is only a partial solution. These bugs should also be fixed upstream. > But on the other hand, once this choice has been made and the > program distributed, I think that the inconvenients of renaming only > in Debian are higher than the advantages. It shouldn't be renamed only in Debian. And even so, it's fairly simple to work around in scripts even if upstream doesn't want to see the light. "which" is your friend. > Renaming is a practical disadvantage for the users and the package > maintainers. What are the practical advantages? The practical advantages are that 1) you can reimplement scripts without renaming, 2) you don't make it more difficult on public users of the binary who have to remember both the name and the entirely arbitrary aspect of what language it was implemented in[1] and 3) things are consistently named, no matter what the package is. Furthermore, the policy is a *should* directive, not a *must* directive. There are many cases where there are things that are done wrongly, but fixing these historical mistakes are more costly than living with them. A wontfix bug with possible lintian overrides may be acceptable in such rare cases. That said, most packages that are being added to Debian are relatively new works, and don't have a huge historical userbase with legacy scripts; fixing these sorts of issues upstream at the earliest opportunity is the right way forward, and a should directive in policy is the right way to inform everyone of what the proper practice is. Don Armstrong 1: Obviously, tab completion works in interactive use, but it's certainly not the case for writing scripts, documentation, or anything else. If the code is only used interactively, then there's no real downside to renaming it. -- All bad precedents began as justifiable measures. -- Gaius Julius Caesar in "The Conspiracy of Catiline" by Sallust http://www.donarmstrong.com http://rzlab.ucr.edu -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-dist-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org