Bug#164889: Disputes between developers - draft guidelines
On Tue, 22 Oct 2002, Ian Jackson wrote:
> I'm replying privately re #164889, because I expect the rest of
> -project are deeply uninterested in that minor dispute. If you
> disagree and want to post it there, go ahead (and this mail isn't
> secret).
I think our interactions are germane to the project, so, I'm adding a cc to
the bug, as you should have done(geez, aren't you going to even follow your
own guidelines?)
> Perhaps you missed my mails asking you where this previous discussion
> was ? I'm afraid I still can't seem to find it.
Well, I can't find it either. I know it has been done, tho.
> > The issue at hand has been discussed. You have brought no knew arguments to
> > the table. Absolutely none. Why should we(dpkg developers) waste time
> > beating a dead horse?
>
> For example, I said in my mail of Wed, 16 Oct 2002 20:03:17 +0100:
>
> The fact that textutils md5sum has this bug is the reason we're not
> using it. (a) this is a gratuituous change and (b) it makes the
> program less useful.
Er, it's not a bug in textutils. It never was. It's a bug in your program
for not handling textutil's output.
> Perhaps I haven't been sufficiently clear. Let me try again.
> I have two problems with this change:
>
> (a) It is not backwards compatible. Existing software which uses
> md5sum and does something with the output will break (depending on the
> exact circumstances).
So, we can never ever possibly minutely even try to change? I don't *think*
so.
The change is going to stay. Fix your programs and scripts to be more
forgiving in what they accept.
Have you ever considered the fact that your scripts don't work with other
tools? And that it's your scripts that are buggy? Or do you write perfect
software all the time, and never test it?
> (b) The new behaviour leaves no way to just get the unvarnished md5sum
> of some file. Being able to do this is quite useful if you're writing
> shell scripts and the like.
How hard is cut -f 1 -d ' ' or sed -e 's/ .*//'?
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