Re: Clarify rationale for ‘debian/rules’ shebang line

[Tollef Fog Heen <tfheen@err.no>]

]] Peter Samuelson 

(I think this discussion is getting silly, feel free to take it to
private mail.)

| > | === modified file 'policy.sgml'
| > | --- policy.sgml 2009-10-21 20:49:37 +0000
| > | +++ policy.sgml 2009-10-31 00:59:18 +0000
| > | @@ -1725,7 +1725,10 @@
| > |         <p>
| > |           It must start with the line <tt>#!/usr/bin/make -f</tt>,
| 
| [Tollef Fog Heen]
| > This should probably also be changed to allow «#! /usr/bin/make -f»
| > too.  There's no reason to mandate one particular style of hashbangs.
| 
| Why not? 

If there's absolutely no difference between the options, choose the one
that bloats policy less?  Having random requirements in policy that
don't have any practical effect whatsoever just makes policy more
complex without any gain.

| Honestly, it's no more arbitrary than the restriction we
| already have.  If the VDR people can live with having to use
| #!/usr/bin/make -f instead of their trivial wrapper, you can live with
| the inability to use a space after the #!.

I'd rather we had duck typing for more stuff.

| By forbidding this, what problem are we solving?

Unless you do filtering tricks like the VDR people do with their
debian/rules, you'll easily end up not implementing a full make
interface, but just handling the targets that are specified in policy.
This means a higher probability of bugs and so it might make sense to
disallow it.

| Seems purely aesthetic to me.  Just like whether or not to put a space
| after #!.

Except there's no way to make anything go wrong by using «#! /» rather
than «#!/».

-- 
Tollef Fog Heen
UNIX is user friendly, it's just picky about who its friends are