Bug#475772: dpkg should set GREP_OPTIONS

[Kevin Hunter <hunteke@earlham.edu>]

At 2:08p -0400 on Sun, 13 Apr 2008, Colin Watson wrote:
> reassign 475772 general

> > I think an appropriate solution would be to unset or export 
> > GREP_OPTIONS='--color=none' in the beginning of scripts that rely on grep.

> [not feasible, *lots* of legacy scripts to fix]

Good point.  I guess the mode I was thinking as I wrote that was more 
along the lines of "start from a known good point".  Fine, it won't 
happen overnight, but it could be entered into a "best practices" thing 
for noob maintainers and whatnot.

For a semi-analogous example, I'm seeing more and more folks build their 
website CSS by starting with a block of rules and selectors that resets 
all CSS to be the same across all browsers.  I think this is very good 
practice.  For reference:

http://snipurl.com/24bfp  [snipplr_com]

I'm not saying fix all packages, but perhaps enter the general mindset 
and let it trickle down.

> [fix your *interactive* environment]
>  alias grep='grep --color=always'

Now see, that's smart!  This fixes the *interactive* environment, and 
leaves scripts to do their own thing.  Nice.  A little tidbit here, a 
bit more there, and sooner or later I'll get my environment perfect.

/me edits his .bashrc

Thanks!

Kevin