Re: DEP-5 and files with white spaces
* Charles Plessy ple...@debian.org, 2012-02-11, 12:06: For the encoding, this is not a problem limited to the machine-readable format. If the Debian copyright file is in an encoding A, and one file has a name or is in a directory that has a name in an encoding B that can not be represented in A, and that there is no way to escape this problem with wildcards, that the file or directory can not be described by its name regardless of the syntax followed by the copyright file. Not true. You can say “all the files are…” in a plain English copyright file. You can't say that in a DEP-5 copyright file. -- Jakub Wilk -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20120211102324.ga2...@jwilk.net
Re: DEP-5 and files with white spaces
On Fri, Feb 10, 2012 at 11:50:10AM +0100, Adam Borowski wrote: On Thu, Feb 09, 2012 at 11:05:25PM -0800, Russ Allbery wrote: Note that another case that I don't think has been discussed, but which is probably more common than embedded quote marks, is a filename that's invalid UTF-8 (straight ISO 8859-1, for example). Do these even happen anymore? Looking at binary packages, I see just one[1] violation: lletters-media, a package not updated in 6 years. It looks like there is not a single such filename in all sources, anywhere in unstable (for x in *.tar.*z*;do tar tf $x;done). Even lletters-media ships its data with English names and links them at build. -- // If you believe in so-called intellectual property, please immediately // cease using counterfeit alphabets. Instead, contact the nearest temple // of Amon, whose priests will provide you with scribal services for all // your writing needs, for Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory prices. signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: DEP-5 and files with white spaces
Adam Borowski kilob...@angband.pl writes: It looks like there is not a single such filename in all sources, anywhere in unstable (for x in *.tar.*z*;do tar tf $x;done). Even lletters-media ships its data with English names and links them at build. Oh, cool, thank you for checking! I think we can safely not care about this case, then. -- Russ Allbery (r...@debian.org) http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/87zkcp10fo@windlord.stanford.edu
Re: DEP-5 and files with white spaces
On Thu, Feb 09, 2012 at 11:05:25PM -0800, Russ Allbery wrote: Note that another case that I don't think has been discussed, but which is probably more common than embedded quote marks, is a filename that's invalid UTF-8 (straight ISO 8859-1, for example). Do these even happen anymore? Looking at binary packages, I see just one[1] violation: lletters-media, a package not updated in 6 years. Of course, it's source packages that matter, can't check them that easily. Could someone who has all the sources downloaded and unpacked check? My box that has them decided to not heed wake-on-lan. It might be easier to work around the issue by forbidding such filenames. You can expect build failures when trying to access those files, and they can't even be unpacked on some filesystems. [1]. Using dists/unstable/Contents-amd64 for a list of candidates to check, I might have missed something; I can check .debs in the evening. -- // If you believe in so-called intellectual property, please immediately // cease using counterfeit alphabets. Instead, contact the nearest temple // of Amon, whose priests will provide you with scribal services for all // your writing needs, for Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory prices. signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: DEP-5 and files with white spaces
On Thu, Feb 09, 2012 at 11:05:25PM -0800, Russ Allbery wrote: Wouter Verhelst wou...@debian.org writes: On Thu, Feb 09, 2012 at 11:01:00AM +0100, Goswin von Brederlow wrote: Not a solution on its own. Actually, I think it's a perfectly workable solution. What about a file named foo bar' baz? For a worst case what about files with newlines? Unless these are part of a test suite on filenames, slap upstream and tell them to use sane filenames? We're basically retracing the previous discussion, and rediscovering why we left the spec alone. Formal correctness says that any possible file name should be representable, at which point filenames with newlines or embedded quote characters are a theoretical possibility and we would want some sort of robust solution for all those cases. Right. If we *aren't* going to try to represent absolutely any possible legal filename exactly, then we're debating over how much of a technical correctness hole we want to leave, not over whether we're going to have one. At that point, I think it's reasonable to ask if we care about going to the work of expanding the spec to handle filenames with spaces in them without wildcards, as even that is not a horribly common case. (I realize it's more common for upstreams who develop on Windows or Mac OS.) Indeed, so the question is how far will we go in this. I think having filenames with spaces in them is common enough that it warrants extending the spec for. I do not think that having filenames with weird characters in that have special meaning to a shell are common enough to warrant extending the spec for. On a personal note, one of my upstreams (beid) has a fairly complex licensing situation and has files in the tarball with spaces in the names... I suppose it would be to my benefit that this were allowed, but I guess it's also fair to say I may be biased. [...] -- The volume of a pizza of thickness a and radius z can be described by the following formula: pi zz a -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20120210110722.gm20...@grep.be
Re: DEP-5 and files with white spaces
* Russ Allbery r...@debian.org, 2012-02-09, 23:05: Note that another case that I don't think has been discussed, but which is probably more common than embedded quote marks, is a filename that's invalid UTF-8 (straight ISO 8859-1, for example). That's also not representable in our typical debian/copyright file, The specification currently reads: “Only the wildcards * and ? apply; the former matches any number of characters (including none), the latter a single character.” But characters of which encoding? If UTF-8, then for some filenames, no wildcard exist that would match them. -- Jakub Wilk -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20120210115827.ga2...@jwilk.net
Re: DEP-5 and files with white spaces
Jakub Wilk jw...@debian.org writes: * Russ Allbery r...@debian.org, 2012-02-09, 23:05: Note that another case that I don't think has been discussed, but which is probably more common than embedded quote marks, is a filename that's invalid UTF-8 (straight ISO 8859-1, for example). That's also not representable in our typical debian/copyright file, The specification currently reads: “Only the wildcards * and ? apply; the former matches any number of characters (including none), the latter a single character.” But characters of which encoding? If UTF-8, then for some filenames, no wildcard exist that would match them. Indeed. That's arguably a worse hole in the specification than whitespace handling, since it may not be possible to use wildcards to work around it. I'm not sure if we need to say something about that explicitly, or if it's rare enough that we don't have to care. -- Russ Allbery (r...@debian.org) http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/8739aiftrw@windlord.stanford.edu
Re: DEP-5 and files with white spaces
On Fri, Feb 10, 2012 at 6:50 PM, Adam Borowski wrote: Of course, it's source packages that matter, can't check them that easily. Could someone who has all the sources downloaded and unpacked check? My box that has them decided to not heed wake-on-lan. Just look at the Contents-source files: ftp://ftp.debian.org/debian/dists/sid/main/Contents-source.gz -- bye, pabs http://wiki.debian.org/PaulWise -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/CAKTje6FuBNXqT4puetTOBdoxpOE+EVLsasbfc==nsCtAeu=i...@mail.gmail.com
Re: DEP-5 and files with white spaces
* Paul Wise p...@debian.org, 2012-02-11, 08:35: Of course, it's source packages that matter, can't check them that easily. Could someone who has all the sources downloaded and unpacked check? My box that has them decided to not heed wake-on-lan. Just look at the Contents-source files: ftp://ftp.debian.org/debian/dists/sid/main/Contents-source.gz This file is whole UTF-8. I believe that ftp-masters recode non-UTF-8 filenames to UTF-8 in some unspecified way. -- Jakub Wilk -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20120211003851.ga4...@jwilk.net
Re: DEP-5 and files with white spaces
Le Fri, Feb 10, 2012 at 10:05:55AM -0800, Russ Allbery a écrit : Jakub Wilk jw...@debian.org writes: * Russ Allbery r...@debian.org, 2012-02-09, 23:05: Note that another case that I don't think has been discussed, but which is probably more common than embedded quote marks, is a filename that's invalid UTF-8 (straight ISO 8859-1, for example). That's also not representable in our typical debian/copyright file, The specification currently reads: “Only the wildcards * and ? apply; the former matches any number of characters (including none), the latter a single character.” But characters of which encoding? If UTF-8, then for some filenames, no wildcard exist that would match them. Indeed. That's arguably a worse hole in the specification than whitespace handling, since it may not be possible to use wildcards to work around it. I'm not sure if we need to say something about that explicitly, or if it's rare enough that we don't have to care. Dear all, how about documenting these facts in the DEP and going ahead with the current syntax ? + section id=limitations +titleLimitations/title +para + The pattern syntax can not distinguish files whose names differ only by + whitespaces, nor files that have the same name but are in paths that only + differ by whitespaces. +/para +para + It is not possible to represent a file name or a path using an encoding + that is not compatible with Unicode. +/para + /section For the white spaces, it has been a year that we claim that we will not make normative changes unless necessary, and the possibilities discussed are all theoretical. I think that extensions are welcome for next versions of the format, but the possibility to break existing files with a normative change is not less unlikely than the possibility to encounter a package where two files have different licenses and names that differ only by whitespaces, and where the upstream author would either refuse or not be available to correct that problem. For the encoding, this is not a problem limited to the machine-readable format. If the Debian copyright file is in an encoding A, and one file has a name or is in a directory that has a name in an encoding B that can not be represented in A, and that there is no way to escape this problem with wildcards, that the file or directory can not be described by its name regardless of the syntax followed by the copyright file. It is good to care about these cases, and I propose to do so by documenting them the version 1.0 and keeping bugs open, that may be solved in a future version if there is a solution that satisfies both the developers who write the files and the developers who write the parsers. Have a nice week-end, -- Charles Plessy Tsurumi, Kanagawa, Japan -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20120211030650.gf19...@falafel.plessy.net
Re: DEP-5 and files with white spaces
Benjamin Drung bdr...@debian.org writes: Am Mittwoch, den 01.02.2012, 14:20 -0800 schrieb Russ Allbery: Benjamin Drung bdr...@debian.org writes: DEP-5 is nice, but how can I specify a license for a file with white spaces? For example you want to specify that the file foo/file one.bar is licensed under ISC, but foo/file_one.bar is licensed under GPL. How can you do that? No, that distinction isn't representable. There was some earlier discussion about that, and the conclusion reached was that it was a rare case that wasn't worth making the syntax more complicated (after various more complicated syntaxes were tossed around without making anyone very happy). Is it to complex to have a syntax that is similar to what the shell does? Two solutions pop into my mind. Please let me know, why these are not use. You can point me to previous discussions. Idea 1: Use a escape sequence for specifying a whitespace (e.g. \ for a space). Idea 2: Allow quotation marks. Not a solution on its own. What about a file named foo bar' baz? For a worst case what about files with newlines? MfG Goswin -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/87r4y4s4v7.fsf@frosties.localnet
Re: DEP-5 and files with white spaces
Hello, On Thu, 09 Feb 2012 11:01:00 +0100 Goswin von Brederlow goswin-...@web.de wrote: Idea 2: Allow quotation marks. Not a solution on its own. What about a file named foo bar' baz? For a worst case what about files with newlines? You can double the delimiter to embed it into a string, like this: foo bar' baz or 'foo bar'' baz'. -- WBR, Andrew signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: DEP-5 and files with white spaces
On Thu, Feb 09, 2012 at 07:38:29PM +0300, Andrew Shadura wrote: Hello, On Thu, 09 Feb 2012 11:01:00 +0100 Goswin von Brederlow goswin-...@web.de wrote: Idea 2: Allow quotation marks. Not a solution on its own. What about a file named foo bar' baz? For a worst case what about files with newlines? You can double the delimiter to embed it into a string, like this: foo bar' baz or 'foo bar'' baz'. Urgh. Or do 1. as well as 2. and have escape sequences. Also urgh. It's a theoretical problem and Jakub has shown that there is a workable solution with the current syntax. He's also shown that we couldn't handle distinguishing foo bar from foo\tbar. That is, surely, also entirely theoretical. -- Jon Dowland -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20120209171751.GA23213@debian
Re: DEP-5 and files with white spaces
On Thu, Feb 09, 2012 at 11:01:00AM +0100, Goswin von Brederlow wrote: Idea 2: Allow quotation marks. Not a solution on its own. Actually, I think it's a perfectly workable solution. What about a file named foo bar' baz? For a worst case what about files with newlines? Unless these are part of a test suite on filenames, slap upstream and tell them to use sane filenames? (and if they *are* part of a test suite on file names, they need not have content, therefore need not appear in a copyright file, and can be trivially created at run time with 'touch') -- The volume of a pizza of thickness a and radius z can be described by the following formula: pi zz a -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20120210062901.gn3...@grep.be
Re: DEP-5 and files with white spaces
Wouter Verhelst wou...@debian.org writes: On Thu, Feb 09, 2012 at 11:01:00AM +0100, Goswin von Brederlow wrote: Not a solution on its own. Actually, I think it's a perfectly workable solution. What about a file named foo bar' baz? For a worst case what about files with newlines? Unless these are part of a test suite on filenames, slap upstream and tell them to use sane filenames? We're basically retracing the previous discussion, and rediscovering why we left the spec alone. Formal correctness says that any possible file name should be representable, at which point filenames with newlines or embedded quote characters are a theoretical possibility and we would want some sort of robust solution for all those cases. If we *aren't* going to try to represent absolutely any possible legal filename exactly, then we're debating over how much of a technical correctness hole we want to leave, not over whether we're going to have one. At that point, I think it's reasonable to ask if we care about going to the work of expanding the spec to handle filenames with spaces in them without wildcards, as even that is not a horribly common case. (I realize it's more common for upstreams who develop on Windows or Mac OS.) That's how ended up where we are now. Note that another case that I don't think has been discussed, but which is probably more common than embedded quote marks, is a filename that's invalid UTF-8 (straight ISO 8859-1, for example). That's also not representable in our typical debian/copyright file, and is likely to cause significant practical problems (such as having the encoding format change every time the maintainer edits the file, since some editors will try to fix such problems). -- Russ Allbery (r...@debian.org) http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/87pqdn183u@windlord.stanford.edu
Re: DEP-5 and files with white spaces
Le Thu, Feb 02, 2012 at 09:50:09AM +0900, Charles Plessy a écrit : 1) DEP 5 and directory/file names with spaces (http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2009/06/msg00155.html) My summary is that the participants were quite divided on whether separating the list of files by spaces or by commas. Space-separation took advantage, as the resulting list can be pasted directly in a shell. The escaping syntax was glob(7) at the time, but it allows patterns that the shell will not expand, so the two wildcards * and ? were proposed. My personal feeling is that more complete syntax, like allowing shell quotes, did not make it because no participant had patience or energy left for moving this forward. But ‘shell pastability’ is I think the conclusion. While reading the DEP again, I realised that our current format is not always directly pastable to the shell, as the wildcards are allowed to match directory separators, so that ‘*/Makefile.in’ can match at any depth. There is a small number of packages using that feature, with Makefile.in in most of the cases. It looks like that we can not have both conveniences at the same time. I think that it is one more argument to consider revisiting the current syntax in a later evolution of the format, but I think that we should accumulate more experience before that. Have a nice week-end, -- Charles Plessy Tsurumi, Kanagawa, Japan -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20120204024339.ga4...@merveille.plessy.net
Re: DEP-5 and files with white spaces
Benjamin Drung bdr...@debian.org writes: DEP-5 is nice, but how can I specify a license for a file with white spaces? For example you want to specify that the file foo/file one.bar is licensed under ISC, but foo/file_one.bar is licensed under GPL. How can you do that? No, that distinction isn't representable. There was some earlier discussion about that, and the conclusion reached was that it was a rare case that wasn't worth making the syntax more complicated (after various more complicated syntaxes were tossed around without making anyone very happy). The general way to specify information for a file name that contains whitespace is to use wildcards to match the whitespace, which means that you can't disambiguate from other files that only differ in the places where whitespace is present. Out of curiosity, have you run across a case where this matters, or were you asking because it's a theoretical hole? It's definitely a theoretical hole, but one of the reasons why we didn't spend more time on it was that everyone was dubious that the case would arise in a real-world situation. -- Russ Allbery (r...@debian.org) http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/8762fq2o2u@windlord.stanford.edu
Re: DEP-5 and files with white spaces
* Russ Allbery r...@debian.org, 2012-02-01, 14:20: DEP-5 is nice, but how can I specify a license for a file with white spaces? For example you want to specify that the file foo/file one.bar is licensed under ISC, but foo/file_one.bar is licensed under GPL. How can you do that? No, that distinction isn't representable. This one is representable. You can take advantage of the fact the the last paragraph that matches a particular file applies to it: | Files: foo/file?one.bar | License: ISC | | Files: foo/file_one.bar | License: GPL That said, you _can_ construct even more contrived examples which are unrepresentable, e.g. by replacing _ with a tab. The general way to specify information for a file name that contains whitespace is to use wildcards to match the whitespace, That works only if you can stand ugliness of such Files fields. -- Jakub Wilk -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20120201223158.ga...@jwilk.net
Re: DEP-5 and files with white spaces
Jakub Wilk jw...@debian.org writes: This one is representable. You can take advantage of the fact the the last paragraph that matches a particular file applies to it: | Files: foo/file?one.bar | License: ISC | | Files: foo/file_one.bar | License: GPL Oh, hey, yes, good point. -- Russ Allbery (r...@debian.org) http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/87ty3a18in@windlord.stanford.edu
Re: DEP-5 and files with white spaces
Am Mittwoch, den 01.02.2012, 14:20 -0800 schrieb Russ Allbery: Benjamin Drung bdr...@debian.org writes: DEP-5 is nice, but how can I specify a license for a file with white spaces? For example you want to specify that the file foo/file one.bar is licensed under ISC, but foo/file_one.bar is licensed under GPL. How can you do that? No, that distinction isn't representable. There was some earlier discussion about that, and the conclusion reached was that it was a rare case that wasn't worth making the syntax more complicated (after various more complicated syntaxes were tossed around without making anyone very happy). Is it to complex to have a syntax that is similar to what the shell does? Two solutions pop into my mind. Please let me know, why these are not use. You can point me to previous discussions. Idea 1: Use a escape sequence for specifying a whitespace (e.g. \ for a space). Idea 2: Allow quotation marks. The general way to specify information for a file name that contains whitespace is to use wildcards to match the whitespace, which means that you can't disambiguate from other files that only differ in the places where whitespace is present. I don't like the idea of abusing a wildcard if the files could be specified more precisely. Out of curiosity, have you run across a case where this matters, or were you asking because it's a theoretical hole? It's definitely a theoretical hole, but one of the reasons why we didn't spend more time on it was that everyone was dubious that the case would arise in a real-world situation. I haven't run across an actual case. This case just popped into my mind and I wondered how to cover this case. -- Benjamin Drung Debian Ubuntu Developer signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part
Re: DEP-5 and files with white spaces
Am Mittwoch, den 01.02.2012, 23:31 +0100 schrieb Jakub Wilk: * Russ Allbery r...@debian.org, 2012-02-01, 14:20: DEP-5 is nice, but how can I specify a license for a file with white spaces? For example you want to specify that the file foo/file one.bar is licensed under ISC, but foo/file_one.bar is licensed under GPL. How can you do that? No, that distinction isn't representable. This one is representable. You can take advantage of the fact the the last paragraph that matches a particular file applies to it: | Files: foo/file?one.bar | License: ISC | | Files: foo/file_one.bar | License: GPL That said, you _can_ construct even more contrived examples which are unrepresentable, e.g. by replacing _ with a tab. The general way to specify information for a file name that contains whitespace is to use wildcards to match the whitespace, That works only if you can stand ugliness of such Files fields. True words. For example, the eclipse source package has files with spaces in it using ? instead of spaces does look ugly. -- Benjamin Drung Debian Ubuntu Developer signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part
Re: DEP-5 and files with white spaces
Benjamin Drung bdr...@debian.org writes: Is it to complex to have a syntax that is similar to what the shell does? Two solutions pop into my mind. Please let me know, why these are not use. You can point me to previous discussions. Idea 1: Use a escape sequence for specifying a whitespace (e.g. \ for a space). Idea 2: Allow quotation marks. Yeah, both of those were among the other syntax proposals that were suggested, and I think one of them was in the document at one point. Using backslash is probably the easiest, although it does make parsing the files harder. -- Russ Allbery (r...@debian.org) http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/87pqdy184s@windlord.stanford.edu
Re: DEP-5 and files with white spaces
Am Mittwoch, den 01.02.2012, 14:49 -0800 schrieb Russ Allbery: Benjamin Drung bdr...@debian.org writes: Is it to complex to have a syntax that is similar to what the shell does? Two solutions pop into my mind. Please let me know, why these are not use. You can point me to previous discussions. Idea 1: Use a escape sequence for specifying a whitespace (e.g. \ for a space). Idea 2: Allow quotation marks. Yeah, both of those were among the other syntax proposals that were suggested, and I think one of them was in the document at one point. Using backslash is probably the easiest, although it does make parsing the files harder. IMHO allowing both would be the optimum. A real parser would have problems with both, but a simplistic parser that just split the string by spaces would have a problem. -- Benjamin Drung Debian Ubuntu Developer signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part
Re: DEP-5 and files with white spaces
Benjamin Drung bdr...@debian.org writes: Am Mittwoch, den 01.02.2012, 14:49 -0800 schrieb Russ Allbery: Yeah, both of those were among the other syntax proposals that were suggested, and I think one of them was in the document at one point. Using backslash is probably the easiest, although it does make parsing the files harder. IMHO allowing both would be the optimum. A real parser would have problems with both, but a simplistic parser that just split the string by spaces would have a problem. Yeah, that was, as I understand it, the motivation (to allow really simple parsers). I don't know if it's worth revisiting this. I can't say that I particularly liked the outcome we arrived at, but theoretical holes in standards bother me a lot (possibly more than they should). -- Russ Allbery (r...@debian.org) http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/87d39y17ug@windlord.stanford.edu
Re: DEP-5 and files with white spaces
Am Mittwoch, den 01.02.2012, 14:56 -0800 schrieb Russ Allbery: Benjamin Drung bdr...@debian.org writes: Am Mittwoch, den 01.02.2012, 14:49 -0800 schrieb Russ Allbery: Yeah, both of those were among the other syntax proposals that were suggested, and I think one of them was in the document at one point. Using backslash is probably the easiest, although it does make parsing the files harder. IMHO allowing both would be the optimum. A real parser would have problems with both, but a simplistic parser that just split the string by spaces would have a problem. Yeah, that was, as I understand it, the motivation (to allow really simple parsers). What is more important: A good looking copyright file or being parsable by a dead simple, stupid parser? The proposed changes would make the parser overly complex. I don't know if it's worth revisiting this. I can't say that I particularly liked the outcome we arrived at, but theoretical holes in standards bother me a lot (possibly more than they should). I would call a theoretical hole a design bug. -- Benjamin Drung Debian Ubuntu Developer signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part
Re: DEP-5 and files with white spaces
Le Wed, Feb 01, 2012 at 11:44:36PM +0100, Benjamin Drung a écrit : Is it to complex to have a syntax that is similar to what the shell does? Two solutions pop into my mind. Please let me know, why these are not use. You can point me to previous discussions. Hi Benjamin, You can refer to the following threads 1) DEP 5 and directory/file names with spaces (http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2009/06/msg00155.html) My summary is that the participants were quite divided on whether separating the list of files by spaces or by commas. Space-separation took advantage, as the resulting list can be pasted directly in a shell. The escaping syntax was glob(7) at the time, but it allows patterns that the shell will not expand, so the two wildcards * and ? were proposed. My personal feeling is that more complete syntax, like allowing shell quotes, did not make it because no participant had patience or energy left for moving this forward. But ‘shell pastability’ is I think the conclusion. 2) DEP-5: an example parser, choice of syntax for Files: (http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2009/09/msg00558.html) Discussion on the original syntax based on the find command, where I reminded the thread above; no objection. 3) DEP-5: file globbing (http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2010/08/msg00154.html) Discussion about exclusion patterns. 4) DEP-5: Files field and filename patterns (http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2010/08/msg00289.html) (http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2010/09/msg00029.html) The simple globbing with * and ? was finally chosen. It was noted that because it is a lowest common denominator, it leaves the room for expansion later. 5) Re: DEP5: CANDIDATE and ready for use in squeeze+1 (http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2011/01/msg00235.html) In this thread, you questionned how to escape files with a space in their names, and did not object to the answer from Lars. The current syntax has been used for years, and while it can be perfected, I do not think that such extension is in the scope of the version 1.0 that we are preparing. What I propose, if you think it is worth, is to open a bug, to track that request for the next revision. Have a nice day, -- Charles Plessy Tsurumi, Kanagawa, Japan -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20120202005009.gf22...@merveille.plessy.net
