miscutils snag/questions for all

[Jeff Noxon <jeff@router.patch.net>]

I recently took over as maintainer of the miscutils package.  I'm working
on a new release, but I have several questions to ask before I continue.

* miscutils is one of the few (only?) debian packages currently
  distributed without diffs.  I'd like to distribute it with diffs.

* The miscutils come from the util-linux distribution maintained by
  Rik Faith and others.

* util-linux 2.5 contains _much_ more than miscutils; specifically, it
  contains stuff to be found in these debian packages:
     bsdutils, mount, syslogd, chfn, last, and others.

* Some important util-linux 2.5 utilities are missing from Debian, such as
  setterm, ipcs, ipcrm, etc.  Copyright permitting, I would like to add
  these packages (as appropriate) to miscutils.

* I'm not sure how to approach the diff problem.  Surely I do not want
  to leave all of the unused source files from util-linux in the debian
  miscutils package.  Should the diffs make these files empty?

* Should I just throw away the idea of providing diffs?

* Should we consider merging bsdutils and miscutils into one package?

Any ideas to help make miscutils a better, cleaner package are welcome.

Below is a list of programs in util-linux and where they appear in
the Debian distribution.

Thanks,

Jeff

PS - should I also post this to debian-user?

--------- snip ---------

util-linux
  program	- debian package name

disk-utils/
  fdformat	- miscutils
  fdisk		- miscutils
  fsck.minix	- miscutils
  mkfs		- miscutils
  mkfs.minix	- miscutils
  mkswap	- miscutils
  setfdprm	- miscutils
  
login-utils/
  agetty	- miscutils (as getty)
  chfn		- chfn
  chsh		- chfn
  last		- last
  login		- miscutils
  mesg		- bsdutils
  newgrp	- miscutils
  shutdown	- sysvinit
  simpleinit	- N/A
  vipw		- not found! (miscutils)
  wall		- bsdutils

misc-utils/
  cal		- bsdutils
  chkdupexe	- not found! [purpose?]
  clear		- ncurses-runtime
  domainname	- netstd
  dsplit	- dsplit [different?]
  getoptprog	- miscutils? (getopt)
  hostid	- not found! [necessary?]
  hostname	- hostname
  kill		- bsdutils
  logger	- bsdutils
  mcookie	- not found! [purpose?]
  md5sum	- dpkg
  namei		- not found! [purpose?]
  reset		- ncurses-runtime
  script	- bsdutils
  setterm	- not found! [copyright?]
  tsort		- bsdutils

mount/*		- mount

sys-utils/
  arch		- miscutils
  chroot	- bsdutils
  clock		- miscutils
  ctrlaltdel	- not found!
  ipcrm		- not found!
  ipcs 		- not found!
  kbdrate	- miscutils
  rdev		- miscutils
  renice	- bsdutils
  readprofile	- not found! [purpose?]
  setserial	- setserial
  setsid 	- not found!

syslogd/*	- syslogd

text-utils/
  col		- bsdutils
  colcrt	- bsdutils
  colrm		- bsdutils
  column	- bsdutils
  more		- bsdutils
  rev		- not found!
  strings	- binutils
  ul		- bsdutils
  hexdump	- bsdutils
  od		- textutils