Hi,
I maintain the "rhyme" package, which also includes a /usr/bin/rhyme.
See bugs #201175 and #201039
For the moment I've uploaded a version of rhyme to conflict with surfraw and
have closed #201039 with it.
This is highly suboptimal though
Basicaly the major problem here is that surfraw performs *excessive*
namespace pollution:
ssta@bitech88:~/surfraw-1.0.7/debian/surfraw/usr/bin$ ls -l
total 184
-rwxr-xr-x 1 ssta ssta 385 Jul 14 11:25 W
-rwxr-xr-x 1 ssta ssta 1136 Jul 14 11:25 altavista
-rwxr-xr-x 1 ssta ssta 2383 Jul 14 11:25 amazon
-rwxr-xr-x 1 ssta ssta 660 Jul 14 11:25 appwatch
-rwxr-xr-x 1 ssta ssta 653 Jul 14 11:25 ask
-rwxr-xr-x 1 ssta ssta 1505 Jul 14 11:25 austlii
-rwxr-xr-x 1 ssta ssta 633 Jul 14 11:25 britannica
-rwxr-xr-x 1 ssta ssta 1325 Jul 14 11:25 cite
-rwxr-xr-x 1 ssta ssta 710 Jul 14 11:25 cnn
-rwxr-xr-x 1 ssta ssta 637 Jul 14 11:25 currency
-rwxr-xr-x 1 ssta ssta 995 Jul 14 11:25 debbugs
-rwxr-xr-x 1 ssta ssta 1708 Jul 14 11:25 debcontents
-rwxr-xr-x 1 ssta ssta 1758 Jul 14 11:25 debpackages
-rwxr-xr-x 1 ssta ssta 1165 Jul 14 11:25 deja
-rwxr-xr-x 1 ssta ssta 567 Jul 14 11:25 excite
-rwxr-xr-x 1 ssta ssta 1168 Jul 14 11:25 fast
-rwxr-xr-x 1 ssta ssta 670 Jul 14 11:25 filesearching
-rwxr-xr-x 1 ssta ssta 5135 Jul 14 11:25 freebsd
-rwxr-xr-x 1 ssta ssta 572 Jul 14 11:25 freshmeat
-rwxr-xr-x 1 ssta ssta 626 Jul 14 11:25 ftpfind
-rwxr-xr-x 1 ssta ssta 899 Jul 14 11:25 ftpsearch
-rwxr-xr-x 1 ssta ssta 1471 Jul 14 11:25 google
-rwxr-xr-x 1 ssta ssta 1796 Jul 14 11:25 jake
-rwxr-xr-x 1 ssta ssta 2306 Jul 14 11:25 netbsd
-rwxr-xr-x 1 ssta ssta 2130 Jul 14 11:25 openbsd
-rwxr-xr-x 1 ssta ssta 1253 Jul 14 11:25 pubmed
-rwxr-xr-x 1 ssta ssta 1071 Jul 14 11:25 raging
-rwxr-xr-x 1 ssta ssta 1538 Jul 14 11:25 rhyme
-rwxr-xr-x 1 ssta ssta 1395 Jul 14 11:25 scaleplus
-rwxr-xr-x 1 ssta ssta 598 Jul 14 11:25 slashdot
-rwxr-xr-x 1 ssta ssta 671 Jul 14 11:25 slinuxdoc
-rwxr-xr-x 1 ssta ssta 851 Jul 14 11:25 sourceforge
-rwxr-xr-x 1 ssta ssta 2046 Jul 14 11:25 stockquote
-rwxr-xr-x 1 ssta ssta 2977 Jul 14 11:25 stranslate
-rwxr-xr-x 1 ssta ssta 658 Jul 14 11:25 sundocs
-rwxr-xr-x 1 ssta ssta 701 Jul 14 11:25 sunsolve
-rwxr-xr-x 1 ssta ssta 7079 Jul 14 11:25 surfraw
-rwxr-xr-x 1 ssta ssta 644 Jul 14 11:25 swhois
-rwxr-xr-x 1 ssta ssta 638 Jul 14 11:25 thesaurus
-rwxr-xr-x 1 ssta ssta 640 Jul 14 11:25 webster
-rwxr-xr-x 1 ssta ssta 2599 Jul 14 11:25 wetandwild
-rwxr-xr-x 1 ssta ssta 1942 Jul 14 11:25 woffle
-rwxr-xr-x 1 ssta ssta 362 Jul 14 11:25 xxx
-rwxr-xr-x 1 ssta ssta 1035 Jul 14 11:25 yahoo
ssta@bitech88:~/surfraw-1.0.7/debian/surfraw/usr/bin$ ls | wc -l
44
Okay, I can see that a lot of commands might be desirable here, but there
are a LOT of these with VERY generic names. "ask", "fast", "rhyme", "cite",
etc.
The package seems to be effectively unusable at the moment (see bug #200164)
and looks effectively unmaintained to me (no upload in over a year, and no
buglog entries from the maintainer in that long that I can find.)
So, the solutions I am considering are:
1: I hijack/adopt this package, clean it up, reduce the namespace pollution
by making each command an argument to just ONE command, and generally
making the package fit for use.
2: Filing for its removal on the basis of the extreme pollution and lack of
maintenance.
It looks like it needs a LOT of work to achieve 1, so I'll probably go for 2
unless someone steps forward to take it on, since my current Debian time is
very limited :(
Since there really are a lot of *trivial* to fix bugs, that have been lying
around for a year, I'd say this package was unmaintained. It looks to me
like it could be a very useful package though. If someone in the NM queue
for example had the time to take this, then I'd be happy to sponsor uploads
for them indefinitely.
Of course, all of this assumes that Christian Surchi <csurchi@debian.org> is
in fact MIA and/or no longer interested in the package. He will be CCd
because this mail is going to the buglog, and if he steps forward, cleans up
his package, and does something about the namespace pollution, I'll be
happy. If not then I'll either hijack it, adopt it, or file for removal.
CCing -devel because I'm *bloody* pissed off, and I'd like to give people
the chance to flame/give me reasons not to do this. hijacking someone elses
package isn't a thing to take lightly, no matter how poor a job they appear
to be doing of it to me.
Cheers,
Stephen
Attachment:
pgpB1JLNVx_fy.pgp
Description: PGP signature