Re: GNU Parallel Bug Reports Latest parallel in non-default prefix gives

[Kilian Evang]

Hi,

I stumbled upon the same problem described by the OP of this thread:

http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-parallel/2014-08/msg00011.html

The verdict was:

> So the first thing you should do is contact root and explain him that
> one should only use --tollef if one knows what one is doing. Doing it
> by default is a very bad idea, and when packagers do that, they are
> doing it wrong.
>
> Feel free to quote the author of GNU Parallel for saying so.

Yeah, why would packagers do such a stupid thing? Could it be because 
*the GNU Parallel NEWS file itself suggested so back in 2011*? I quote:

>   By putting --tollef in the site wide config file you can deinstall
>   Tollef's parallel and install GNU Parallel instead without any
>   change for users or scripts. This is useful for packagers that
>   currently rename GNU Parallel or simply do not distribute GNU
>   Parallel because the command name conflicts with Tollef's parallel.

It gets better: apparently this use case was why GNU Parallel 
*introduced support for a site-wide configuration file in the first place*.

So as a result we have this situation where --tollef is in 
/etc/parallel/config in many distros (Ubuntu 12.04 in my case) and 
prevents users who are not root from using recent versions of GNU Parallel.

So especially seeing this history, I think GNU Parallel users would be 
much better served by continuing to silently support --tollef for the 
time being, as long as it's overriden by --gnu.

Kilian