Package: coreutils Version: 8.23-4 Severity: wishlist
Hi. It would be nice if the package could provide a clean out-of-the-box way to get global --reflink=auto behaviour. Starting with 8.24, mv --reflink=auto will be the default, but for cp it stays at "never", and probably always will, see Pádraig's comment here: https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/80351/why-is-cp-reflink-auto-not-the-default-behaviour/152639#152639 I have no opinion on whether these arguemnts are good or not, some may argue they justify not using reflink per default, some may say that people choosing filesystems as btrfs typically expect/want their drawbacks/advantages. Anyway, it should be easily possible to switch the global default. Shell aliases are not a solution, they're typically not expanded in non-interactive shells (and while at least bash allows to do so, I'd say this is rather dangerous as it potentially breaks countless scripts) and as such any system scripts, cron jobs (that make e.g. backups) or any other program that directly invokes cp wouldn't benefit from it. Creating a wrapper shell script and dpkg-diverting the whole story doesn't seem proper either, as the wrapper would require additional shell execution... and why should people who want the more "native" btrfs behaviour have to suffer from such penalty? Maybe the coreutils package could provide a 2nd cp binary with changed default and people could have things more easily switched, either debconf (probably difficult for coreutils ;) ) or some proper end-user friendly documentation on how to dpkg-divert. Cheers, Chris. PS: Oh and having 8.24 in Debian would be nice, either PS2: I've CCed Pádraig so he may comment if there are any better ways to provide solution for this upstream, or even if upstream's view may change on the cp/reflink=auto question.
