Alexandre Oliva <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
| On Mar 2, 2000, Jim Meyering <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
| > That'd be ok if there were a compelling reason to continue using such
| > hacks, but in any case, please don't advocate use of -exec in cases
| > like this. Using xargs is more efficient:
|
| But xargs is not as portable: it's not available on all platforms, it
| may fail if there are too many too long pathnames, and it may find
| trouble with filenames containing blanks (but, admittedly, so would
| make and automake), so I just played on the safe side.
Your arguments don't hold water.
As you know, this is for the `make dist' rule. I consider that
to be one of those rules that should work well for a *maintainer*,
not necessarily for the average user. If a maintainer doesn't have
a working version of xargs, then they should install it. Similarly,
if someone builds a distribution for which `find|xargs whatever' fails,
then they have much larger problems. We should compromise quality
only when necessary.
I'm not aware of any way in which `too many too long pathnames' can
cause problems with xargs. Would you please elaborate?
Even with GNU xargs?
