Re: [bug-inetutils] some notes on inetutils-1.8

[Sergey Poznyakoff]

address@hidden ha escrit:

> /bin is the 'traditional' place for it (i know you give a damn on
> tradition and good rites!).

If we were to talk about 'traditional' places, then it is '/usr/sbin',
not '/bin'.

I don't know why inetutils installs syslogd in libexec, and have no special
feeling about that. I tend to agree, however, that it is a strange place
for a system binary. In my opinion $prefix/sbin is a much better location.

> > > the point is that on *nix it is common to document all entities
> > 
> > GNU's not UNIX, and therefore its policies differ from those of UNIX.
> > One of these differences is about how the proper documentation must
> > be organized.
> 
> is GNU against *nix?

It is not *against* anyting. It is *another kind of system*, plain and
simple.  It may look similar in certain aspects (and it does, indeed),
but that does not mean it must mimic the others.

> > The -? option is quite often used in GNU implementations as a
> > shorthand for --help, so there was no "breaking traditions" here.
> > Try `tar -?', as an example.
> 
> try sed -h and see how nicely a GNU tool can come along with good
> rites (which doesn't forbid sed -? in parallel.) why so separatistic???
> i don't get the sense of this split. what is wrong with -h that you

As far as I can tell, there is nothing wrong with it.  It was selected
as a short equivalent for --hop, that's all.

> is good habits and practices, routine and
> normality, and all what makes the live of an admin easier (especially
> in mixed environments) just worthless to you?

Please don't exaggerate.  Speaking about help options and help output,
the truth is that (1) there is no established shortcut option for that
purpose, -h and -? being widely used variants (I have no notion which
one is more frequent) and (2) help features on UNIX systems are either
absent at all or rudimentary at best (see Alfred's reply to this
regard), which makes talking about 'good practices' pointless. To wit:

$ /usr/sbin/syslogd -?
syslogd: cannot open pid file: Permission denied
syslogd: child pid 73148 exited with return code 1
$ /usr/sbin/syslogd -h
syslogd: illegal option -- h
usage: syslogd [-468ACcdknosTuv] [-a allowed_peer]
               [-b bind_address] [-f config_file]
               [-l [mode:]path] [-m mark_interval]
               [-P pid_file] [-p log_socket]
$ mv -?
mv: illegal option -- u
usage: mv [-f | -i | -n] [-v] source target
       mv [-f | -i | -n] [-v] source ... directory
$ mv -h
mv: illegal option -- h
usage: mv [-f | -i | -n] [-v] source target
       mv [-f | -i | -n] [-v] source ... directory

All examples taken from the recent FreeBSD. Do you call this kind of
option handling a ``good habit''? Is that kind of help output a
``good practice''? Does it make the ``live of an admin easier''?
Are we suppose to mimic it just because ``that is a *nix way'' and to
``treat the elders'' nicely?  If so, I have to strongly disagree.

Regards,
Sergey