ps -aux Vs ps aux

[csmall@scooter.o.i.net]

G'day All,
  The latest procps 1.26 is essentially the same as the procps you ftp off
say, sunsite, only it is a lot easier to install!

This means:
  1) It doesn't have colour support
  2) It doesn't have POSIX (ps -efg) support
  3) It doesn't like '-'s any more, by default.

1) we've talked about already, so colour is gone, 2) is a shame, but the
upstream guys tell me it will be in soon.

Now the vexed question about 3).

What does it look like?
scooter$ ps -a
warning: `-' deprecated; use `ps a', not `ps -a'
  PID TTY STAT TIME COMMAND
    222   2 SW   0:00 (getty)
[...]

That warning is the problem.  The reason the warning is there is spelt out in
the man pages.
       The  command-line  arguments  should not be preceeded by a
       `-' character, because in the future, a `-' will  be  used
       to  indicate Unix98-standard command-line arguments, while
       no `-' will indicate the current ``extended BSD'' style of
       command line arguments.

So we have a problem here.  I have forwarded a bug complaining about this
to the upstream guys to get their comments, but what should Debian do?
On the one hand, we have the standard Unix practice, on the other we have
the standard procps behavour.

If we decide to revert to standard Unix bahavour, what do we do about these 
upcoming Unix98 options?

  - Craig

-- 
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