Re: [OT] Re: horse carcas flogging

[Craig Sanders <cas@taz.net.au>]

On Thu, Jun 14, 2001 at 10:41:16PM -0400, Jacob Kuntz wrote:
> from the secret journal of Craig Sanders (cas@taz.net.au):
> > setting EDITOR=/usr/bin/vi is an interesting case in point. it is, IMO,
> > a very annoying bug that vipw, vigr, visudo, etc do not execute vi by
> > default. the name of the program implies vi, not ae and not joe or any
> > other editor.
> 
> Would you feel the same way if those programs were called emacspw and
> emacsgr? 

yes. if a program is called "emacspw" then i'd expect to get emacs if i
ran it, not ae or vi or some other editor.

however:

as i said, it's something that the package maintainer doesn't want to
fix and he has some understandable reasons for that decision (i don't
agree with him, but that's irrelevant - it's not my package).

it's not worth worrying about. i fix it in my /etc/profile and move on
to find something useful to do.

it's also not worth polluting the namespace with dozens of little
programs/scripts/symlinks called {emacs,joe,vi,ae,...}{pw,gr,sudo,...}




<digression>

what is worth worrying about is when a package replaces/renames
an existing binary but doesn't use the alternatives mechanism and
especially when it isn't 100% command-line compatible. e.g. slocate
breaking locate in gnu findutils. if it's not compatible then it
shouldn't have displaced gnu locate.

now, it can be argued that slocate is better than locate....but that
still doesn't justify breaking things that depend on locate being GNU
locate.

i get numerous bug reports for dlocate because slocate has broken
gnu locate. i've got to the point now where i just ignore them...and
eventually get around to re-allocating them to the slocate package. this
bug in slocate even kept dlocate from being in potato - which resulted
in me losing most of my enthusiasm for maintaining the program. i've
got partially implemented plans for dlocate, but it's one of my lowest
priority jobs.

</digression>

> The authors recognised that not everyone likes or even knows how to
> use vi, but still have a need to use those programs.
>
> I'm writing a program to edit ldap entries (part of my project to
> robustify libnss-ldap). The only vi command I know is :q, but the
> project is still called vildap. It will of course call $EDITOR or
> $VISUAL, because that's what people will expect it to do.

fair enough, the precedent has been long-established in debian.

everyone who cares already knows to set their $EDITOR or $VISUAL...and
probably did so ages ago.

anyone who doesn't know/care gets punished with ae :)


craig

-- 
craig sanders <cas@taz.net.au>

Fabricati Diem, PVNC.
 -- motto of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch