On Friday 2009-07-24 13:56, Eric Blake wrote: >> when one has a program that does something like >> >> if(strcmp(argv[0], "gunzip") == 0) >> uncompress(); >> else >> compress(); > >GNU Coding Standards frown on this practice: >http://www.gnu.org/software/automake/manual/standards.html#User-Interfaces > >Instead, it should be done the way coreutils differentiates 'ls' from >'dir' behavior - the latter merely #defines a single variable to choose a >different set of defaults, then includes the source of the former.[...] >That said, you are correct that not all programs follow GCS this closely.
The reason to do symlinking is that some programs are large enough to warrant not compiling them again or have a double copy of it on the filesystem. The presence of /usr/bin/dir in system I would consider a waste of space, even if it's "just" 100K. Do that with something larger - inkscape/inkview seems to be such a candidate - and you quickly waste more space. I might resort to using shell scripts instead of symlinks that will use (using original example) `gzip --mode=gunzip`, because install(1) does not preserve symlinks across copies either. Gah. _______________________________________________ http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/libtool
