Re: GNU Parallel Bug Reports Latest parallel in non-default prefix gives errors about retired options

[Robin Neatherway]

As discussed I attach a small patch for the manual.

Thanks for your work on GNU Parallel, it is a very useful tool.

Robin

On Sat, Aug 30, 2014 at 5:05 PM, Robin Neatherway
<address@hidden> wrote:
> On Sat, Aug 30, 2014 at 6:44 AM, Ole Tange <address@hidden> wrote:
>>> I don't have root access on this machine, so I cannot remove this
>>> file.
>>
>> So the first thing you should do is contact root and explain him that
>> one should only use --tollef if one knows what one is doing. Doing it
>> by default is a very bad idea, and when packagers do that, they are
>> doing it wrong.
>
> I have requested that the parallel package be uninstalled from this machine.
>
>> Feel free to quote the author of GNU Parallel for saying so.
>>
>>> Fedora 20 ships with GNU Parallel 20130522, so while I disagree
>>> with them using that option by default, it is valid for that version
>>> of parallel.
>>
>> While it is a valid option it should never be a default option in
>> /etc/parallel/config, so this is a bug in Fedora 20. May I suggest you
>> file a bug report for Fedora 20, so that can be fixed?
>
> According to https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=987621, this
> is fixed in Fedora 21, and will not be changed in Fedora 20. I found
> some interesting historical reasoning at
> https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=675495#c6, where they
> claim the tollef flag was added by discussion with you to avoid
> upgrades breaking user scripts expecting parallel from moreutils.
> Presumably it wasn't intended to remain this long.
>
>>>> If you do not feel that is described clearly in the manual, please
>>>> help by rephrasing the manual.
>>>
>>> How would you like contributions? A patch to this mailing list against
>>> this repo: http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/parallel.git?
>>
>> That would be fine.
>>
>> :
>>>> You cannot put options that are retired in any config file.
>>>
>>> I see. Is it the case for other options that ~/.parallel/config
>>> overrides /etc/parallel/config, or are they combined? I can't tell
>>> from the manual, so once I understand I could had a section on
>>> configuration file precedence.
>>
>> They are combined (similar to /etc/bashrc). This is why what you put
>> in /etc/parallel/config you should be very sure is needed by everyone.
>>
>> (To make it work in your case, you simply remove the line containing
>> /etc/parallel/config from the source.)
>
> I see, thanks. I will note this behaviour in any patch for the man page.

manual.patch
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