On Fri, Apr 27, 2012 at 04:18:45PM -0400, Joey Hess wrote: > Charles Plessy wrote: > > As proposed in 2010 (http://bugs.debian.org/190753#98), I would like to ask the > > Technical Comittee to reconsider our Policy, and restrict it to cases where the > > name of a program is an interface (http://bugs.debian.org/190753#128). > > Actually, my message http://bugs.debian.org/190753#128 proposed exactly > the opposite of what you say. Specifically, if the name of the program, > including the extension, is an interface, then retain it. Note that > "interface" is fairly broad and could include being used in lots of > documentation, I suppose. I also suggested shipping a symlink for the > benefit of users who don't want to remember implementation details. This seems to me to be a very pragmatic position. I understand, and largely agree with, the reasons for not using a language extension. However, I have also worked in the field of medical image analysis and share Charles P's experience of scripts calling scripts being passed around for years. The script name (warts, language extension, and all) does become the API. Thus, I'd support all the efforts to educate upstream, but in the meanwhile retain the script-name API -- in addition to Joey's suggestion of an extensionless symlink. Cheers, -Steve
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