Bug#88340: Use "chown user:group", not "chown user.group"
On Sun, Mar 04, 2001 at 09:17:07PM +0100, Marek Michalkiewicz wrote:
> > I fail to see how this affects Debian? We use the GNU tools. The chowns
> > happening in maintainer scripts and elsewhere are for a known set of names
> > and so will not be affected by this.
>
> Well, the GNU tools manual recommends using ':', and I think standards
> compliance is a good thing too (and it is very easy in this case).
>
> OK, perhaps my proposal to make GNU chown fail on '.' was a bit extreme,
> but printing a warning wouldn't be a bad idea IMHO.
It's not our business to save the world. There is no way to decide within
chown if it is called from a Debian script or some other place. A lintian
check is quite sufficient to track all occurences of this in the Debian
distribution.
> Changing "chown user.group" to "chown user:group" is not something very
> urgent (no need for a new upload just for this change), but I think it
> would also be good to document this in the policy manual (the section
> about scripts).
I think we have sufficient hints about standard compliance in the manuals.
But you can make a proposal on debian-policy about this.
> (Speaking of scripts: some people say they should start with the "#! /"
> magic, not "#!/" - but I'm not sure where this came from... Anyone?)
Yes, some systems require the space. Linux and Hurd don't, and it is
POSIX incompliant to fail on #!/, so I don't think we should bother.
Marcus
--
`Rhubarb is no Egyptian god.' Debian http://www.debian.org brinkmd@debian.org
Marcus Brinkmann GNU http://www.gnu.org marcus@gnu.org
Marcus.Brinkmann@ruhr-uni-bochum.de
http://www.marcus-brinkmann.de
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