what to do with `namespace-pollution'

[Christian Schwarz <schwarz@monet.m.isar.de>]

A few days ago there was a discussion on debian-devel about
`namespace-pollution', i.e., binaries in the PATH which use a very short
name (1 or 2 characters). The problem with such binaries is that users
usually take 1- or 2-character names for aliases, short shell scripts,
etc. 

>From the discussion on debian-devel I got the impression that most people
agree that we should have as few 1- or 2-character binaries as possible in
the PATH. Of course, there are lots of important programs like `w', `ls',
`rm', etc. in the PATH and these should definitely not changed. 

So the question is, how should we treat non-standard packages which
install binaries with short names? A good example is the `sam' package
which installs a binary `B'. (sam is a plan9 editor) That file name is
used upstream too.

Please tell me what you think about this.


Thanks,

Chris

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