Bug#164889: Disputes between developers - draft guidelines
Adam Heath writes ("Re: Disputes between developers - draft guidelines"):
> 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?)
I meant to, but I forgot. I've sent the BTS a separate copy now.
> > 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.
If you can't provide me with a reference I'm afraid I'm going to have
to ask you to repeat yourself.
> > 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.
By `my program' you mean the program that's calling md5sum ?
I disagree. dpkg's md5sum comes from PGP2, and predates textutils'
version by some time. If there is any kind of de facto specification,
then the pgp/dpkg behaviour has to be definitive.
> > (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.
Well, if the change were a good one, then perhaps there would be some
point in the pain of transition. But what purpose does the change
serve ?
> > (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/ .*//'?
It's needless complexity. Why have md5sum go out of its way to do
something that's actually unhelpful ?
Ian.
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