LSB Commands & Utilities

[Daniel Quinlan <quinlan@transmeta.com>]

We need to develop a listing of required LSB commands and utilities,
document where and why our listing (and the actual command
specifications if need be) differs from SUSv2, and include it as part
of the LSB specification.  If you want to work on this, and you have
the time and expertise, please send me email out-of-band.  Thanks.

SUSv2 is online at http://www.unix-systems.org/single_unix_specification_v2/

This is the list of commands specified in SUSv2:

    admin alias ar asa at awk basename batch bc bg c89 cal calendar cancel
    cat cc cd cflow chgrp chmod chown cksum cmp col comm command compress
    cp cpio crontab csplit ctags cu cut cxref date dd delta df diff dircmp
    dirname dis du echo ed egrep env ex expand expr false fc fg fgrep file
    find fold fort77 fuser gencat get getconf getopts grep hash head iconv
    id ipcrm ipcs jobs join kill lex line link lint ln locale localedef
    logger logname lp lpstat ls m4 mail mailx make man mesg mkdir mkfifo
    more mv newgrp nice nl nm nohup od pack paste patch pathchk pax pcat
    pg pr printf prs ps pwd read renice rm rmdel rmdir sact sccs sed sh
    sleep sort spell split strings strip stty sum tabs tail talk tar
    tee test time touch tput tr true tsort tty type ulimit umask unalias
    uname uncompress unexpand unget uniq unlink unpack uucp uudecode
    uuencode uulog uuname uupick uustat uuto uux val vi wait wc what who
    write xargs yacc zcat

These commands are specified as legacy commands:

    calendar cancel cc col cpio cu dircmp dis egrep fgrep line lint
    lpstat mail pack pcat pg spell sum tar unpack uulog uuname uupick uuto

I need one or more volunteers to categorize each command listed above
as follows:

 1. Distributed?  (yes, sometimes, no)
    Is the command found in today's Linux systems?
 2. Executable, shell built-in, or both?
    If distributed, is the command an executable, a shell built-in, or both?
 3. Wanted?  (A recommendation with short rationale)
    Do we want to require it in the LSB.  If so, why?  If not, why?
    Requiring a SUSv2 legacy command or not requiring a SUSv2 required
    command might require more explanation.
 4. Critical for applications or not?
    Is an LSB application really going to use the command?
 5. Commands that really need to be Linux-ized.
    (Replace compress with gzip, zcat is the gzip zcat, etc.)
 6. Anything that must be added.
 7. any other basic categorization that makes sense...

There maybe a better way to break things down, but I'm looking for
some sort of table so we can start to pick the list apart in an
organized manner.  Reading the specification is a good idea. 

For example, we do not want to require most of the UUCP commands
(possible exceptions: uuencode and uudecode) because UUCP is not used,
etc.  (And most are not distributed with base Linux systems, they are
executables.)

- Dan