|
From: | Antonio Diaz Diaz |
Subject: | Re: Zutils vs single compressor utilities |
Date: | Mon, 17 Jan 2011 20:05:11 +0100 |
User-agent: | Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i586; en-US; rv:1.7.11) Gecko/20050905 |
Paul Eggert wrote:
But how can zutils' "make install" know that the zcat it is about to rename is from gzip instead of from a previous install of zutils?zcat --version, surely.
This would open a can of worms. Among other things zcat may be (the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard says it must be[1]) a link to gzip, which may very well finish with a renamed gzip.
[1] http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=589222"If the gunzip and zcat programs exist, they must be symbolic or hard links to gzip."
BTW, I think the FHS is wrong in this point.
Moreover, I don't think distros would like a package that renames files from other packages.Yes, quite possibly that's true. But I don't see any other solution for gzip 1.4 and earlier, and this is a problem that needs to be addressed if you want to usurp the commands it installs.
IMHO this problem is already solved. Distros are already renaming the commands, (and they will do it in a cleaner way as soon as you provide them a clear hint), and people installing from source can rename them in case they need to. Do you know of any GNU package renaming the Unix commands it replaces?
I am not trying to usurp any commands. I am offering improved replacements for those commands. It is gzip the one that is usurping command names out of its command namespace. I am reclaiming the z* names for multi-format commands like those in zutils, and am asking you to (conditionally) rename the gzip-only scripts to gz* (or disable them) because I think this is the right thing to do.
Best regards, Antonio.
[Prev in Thread] | Current Thread | [Next in Thread] |