on Sat, Dec 18, 2004 at 12:36:17PM +0100, Gergely Nagy (algernon@bonehunter.rulez.org) wrote:
> On Fri, 2004-12-17 at 22:27 -0800, Karsten M. Self wrote:
> > on Wed, Nov 24, 2004 at 04:54:27PM +0000, Colin Watson (cjwatson@debian.org) wrote:
> > > On Fri, Nov 19, 2004 at 06:05:39PM +0100, martin f krafft wrote:
> > > > also sprach Gergely Nagy <algernon@bonehunter.rulez.org> [2004.11.19.1802 +0100]:
> > > > > Umm.. So if I have an NFS-shared $HOME, that I share between
> > > > > Debian, various BSDs and commercial Unixes, I'll have to resort to
> > > > > black magic to get some of my dotfiles appear where they need to,
> > > > > on all of the systems I'm using them?
> > > >
> > > > Use symlinks.
> > >
> > > Or how about we all get a grip and stop making changes for the sake of
> > > changes when the present situation works perfectly well and
> > > interoperates well?
> >
> > $ ls -d . | wc -l
> > 221
> >
> > ...note that that includes . & .., so we're talking 219 dotfiles and
> > directories.
> >
> > Frankly, I'd like to see a $HOME cleanup. Dotfiles are hard to manage,
>
> For the past few years, I did not have any problems managing my
> dotfiles, and I have quite a many (346 to be exact).
Have you tracked growth and/or proliferation? I remember when I had two
dotfiles. The trend is to more, and it's likely to accelerate.
> > there are possible conflicts between packages and user files, and it's
> > tough just to come up with a good directory list recipie to show, say,
> > just dotfiles and directories, excluding . and .., on the command line,
> > without resorting to filters and/or pipes.
>
> Pipes! Oh god! Run, run for your lives, he said pipes and filters!
> Aaargh!
Actually, I found a solution after a bit of banging around:
$ ls -A --ignore=[^.]*
...which can be aliased, say:
alias ldot='ls -A --ignore=[^.]*'
As for avoiding filters and pipes in directory listings: there's a lot
to be said for ls output which:
- Is colorized.
- Is columnar.
- Doesn't behave radically different from any other ls commands.
Sure, pipes and filters are useful. Or you can append a '-C' for
columnar output. Or you can have stuff colorized[1].
Managing this in one command preserves some useful functionality and
consistancy.
> > I agree that policy is rather blunt for this to happen, but the
> > desire needs to be expressed somewhere.
>
> He who is not happy with the situation, can symlink their stuff from
> $HOME to $HOME/etc already. If you're not happy with that, why should I
> be happy with symlinking stuff from $HOME/etc to $HOME?
First, nobody's said which way the symlinks need to run. And
compatibility modes have run both ways.
What's more important than raw implmentation is expressing a preference
and getting applications developers to start following it. Everything
else is bloviating.
> Especially if that's only on Debian,
The idea would be for this to get beyond just Debian.
There's some precedent for this. SysV init comes to mind: RH
eventually came around to the LSB/Debian mode. With a compatibility
mode link farm for a while. Debian's own migration from /usr/doc to
/usr/share/doc is another. You'll likely find you've still /usr/doc
populated with symlinks on your system.
Anyhow, if folks want to create an ~/etc/ populated with dotfiles as
links:
cd
alias ldot="ls -A --ignore=[^.]*"
mkdir etc
cd etc
for f in $( ldot .. )
do
echo -e "Doing $f ... \c"
ln -s ../$f $( echo $f | sed -e 's/^\.//' ) && echo OK ||
echo "** error **"
done
...which puts dotfiles into a form more readily managed, by some
measures. Note you'll have to refresh the directory as dotfiles are
added and/or removed.
Peace.
--------------------
Notes:
1. Unless you're a Pommy, and prefer colourised ls.
--
Karsten M. Self <kmself@ix.netcom.com> http://kmself.home.netcom.com/
What Part of "Gestalt" don't you understand?
Data corrupts. Absolute data corrupts absolutely.
- Ed Self's corollary of Atkinson's Law.
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