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Re: Bug#597571: nodejs: non common executable name



On Tue, Sep 21, 2010 at 01:48:03PM +0100, Ian Jackson wrote:
> 
> Carl Fürstenberg writes ("Re: Bug#597571: nodejs: non common executable name"):
> > Policy only states "The maintainers should report this to the
> > debian-devel mailing list and try to find a consensus about which
> > program will have to be renamed. If a consensus cannot be reached,
> > both programs must be renamed."; I don't see any consensus in the
> > thread you linked to, so technically both must change at the moment :)
> 
> I wrote that bit of the policy and my intent was to try to punish
> people for picking stupid names.
> 

In this case, and many others, the only "people" punished are the
Debian packagers and users.  The packagers because they have to create
patches to rename the binaries, and the users because the name is not
the same for either package in Debian as it is on other distros.

> Yes, both binaries should be renamed.  "node" is a ridiculous name for
> a specific-purpose executable.

At this point in time I would agree.  Twenty or so years ago when the 
ax25 software was first being developed, node adequately described the 
binary's function and was not so common a term.

We had a similar issue not that long ago with the ax25 package "listen".
It had been in Debian for a long time and then someone wanted to upload
something new that was also named "listen".  Initially the ax25 package
name was kept, but later it was changed to "axlisten" and the (created 
much later) audio player was allowed to keep the name. 


Pat
-- 

Patrick Ouellette                 pat@flying-gecko.net
ne4po (at) arrl (dot) net         Amateur Radio: NE4PO 

What kind of change have you been in the world today?

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