Re: nodejs: conflicts with package node needlessly

[Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com>]

(-cc: Julien.  Julien, if you were interested and only read this
late through debian-bugs-rc, sorry about that.
+cc: node@packages.debian.org)

Hi Jérémy,

Jérémy Lal wrote:

> not having /usr/bin/node as nodejs binary path will without any
> doubt render nodejs package unuseful for a vast majority of users.

One solution to this kind of namespace conflict used by some packages
is to put a binary or symlink someplace like

	/usr/lib/nodejs

and ask the user to put it on $PATH if she likes it.

> Package 0.2.0-1 explained in README.Debian it was the user responsibility
> to symlink /usr/local/bin/node to /usr/bin/nodejs, which does not solve
> the conflict with /sbin/node in any way

Right.  However, asking the user to symlink ~/bin/node to
/usr/bin/nodejs would half solve the problem.

But the fundamental problem is independent of Debian.  The bare name
"node" should be usable in scripts, but currently, such use does not
make it clear whether the packet radio program or node.js is meant.
In my opinion, the right solution is to get node.js and node upstream
to agree on what the name should mean.

Yes, this could mean a renaming and unpleasant transition.  Such is
life. :/

Hope that helps,
Jonathan