Re: [PATCH] arch: new program

[Jim Meyering]

Karel Zak <address@hidden> wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 06, 2007 at 09:45:09PM +0200, Jim Meyering wrote:
>> I hate to say it, after Karel has done most of the work, but I suppose
>> simply not adding it to coreutils should be considered an option, too.
>>
>> Opinions?
>
> On Wed, Jun 06, 2007 at 04:17:32PM -0700, Paul Eggert wrote:
>> Jim Meyering <address@hidden> writes:
>>
>> > What do you think of a new configure-time option that
>> > would list extra programs like arch that you'd like to install?
>> > I would probably add "su" to the list, since most installers don't
>> > want the version from coreutils.
>
>  Also.. I can prepare this patch if you want this configure option.

Hi Karel,

I began work on it over the weekend and haven't gotten back to it.
Should find time to finish by Monday.

>> Sounds good to me.  There is the question of what the default set of
>> programs would be; one possibility would be omitting 'arch', 'su', and
>> whatever coreutils already decides by default to omit.
>
>  is there any final decision? I'd like to freeze util-linux-ng code in
>  next few weeks.
>
>  We can also postpone this issue ;-( There is no problem to keep the old
>  arch command in util-linux for the next release.

I'm planning something like this:

    Programs *not* to install by default:

        su
        arch

    Here's a minimum list of programs that you may choose not to install:

        chroot
        df
        hostid
        hostname
        nice
        pinky
        stty
        su
        uname
        uptime
        users
        who

    I may extend that to include the full list of all 100 program names.

    If you want to install one of the default-not-installed ones,
    you'd use e.g., ./configure --enable-install-program=su

    To add to the list of not-installed programs, you'd use
    --enable-no-install-program=hostname

The option syntax is awkward due to autoconf's pseudo-requirement
that such options look like --enable-REMAINDER_OF_NAME=VAL .
I'd welcome a better name.