Re: Is anyone maintaining (the ham radio tool) node?

[Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com>]

Cyril Brulebois wrote:
> Vincent Bernat <bernat@debian.org> (14/11/2011):

>> See how communities may react to  this. Ruby community does not like our
>> packaging just  because we enforce stability over  freshness. What would
>> think  node.js community  if  we are  using  /usr/bin/nodejs instead  of
>> /usr/bin/node. Debian would  be listed as a black sheep  in every FAQ or
>> tutorial and  users will  be invited to  just install some  non official
>> package or use the source.
>
> Oh noes!!!!1111oneoneoneeleven

Or to put it another way, one could kindly explain to such people that

 (1) the node.js packaging in unstable or experimental is reasonably up to
     date (if that is true --- I just don't know, but it presumably could
     be easily could be made to be so if someone wants to do that)

 (2) faced with a diverse userbase that was using the "node" command for
     two different purposes, Debian is doing the only thing it can do to
     make scripts reliable: rename both.  As a nice side-effect, we get a
     simple, Google-able name for the tool.  People unhappy with the
     divergence from upstream can do one of two things:

     (a) install a /usr/local/bin/node -> ../../bin/nodejs symlink locally,
         by running the following handy install-nodejs-symlink script

     (b) work with upstream to provide the interpreter under both names,
         so scripts can use "#!/usr/bin/env nodejs" to be self-documenting
         and work reliably everywhere

(By the way, most of the description under (2) might apply to the ham
radio tool, too.  In other words, none of this seems particularly unique
to interpreted languages.)