Re: many packages FTBFS, if $TAPE is set
* Joey Hess <joeyh@debian.org> [070828 23:26]:
> This thread has concentrated on fixing packages, but I would appreciate
> a little insight into why someone might set TAPE in their environment by
> default. Surely if you set it by default, you must realse that you're
> asking any such invocation of tar to write over your tape?
I'd assume any such invocation (i.e. any invocation of tar telling it to
use the default tape output, that always had been the normaly non-existing
tape device) would cause the input or output take this. I don't monitor
manpages to erronously claiming its always standard output here.
> Why would anyone do that?
It's nice to have some device specified by default without always having
to retype it. It's not that long ago that I used TAPE to point to a zip
disk to just store data on there without more loss by other filesystems
but tar.
> It's not as if Debian packages are the only software
> that might run tar without -f, so even if they were all fixed, setting
> TAPE by default would be an incredibly risky thing to do.
To be honest, I'm not even sure I even noticed the default changed from
/dev/whatever to stdin/out. And even if I noticed or someone told it
- I think even if I read the manpage in its current form - I would have
never considered it no longer using $TAPE. Thus even with knowing "-" the
default, I'd have never dared to use it in some script, and would
consider using tar without -f in the command line as sloppy and
dangerous. I'm happy someone else fell in that pit before me.
Am I getting old when people suddenly assume things I not even heared
of?
Hochachtungsvoll,
Bernhard R. Link
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