I am not familiar with Debian or Linux, but am a manager of the MacPorts project, and in that capacity I have certainly encountered the problem of two different software packages wanting to install a program of the same name. The authors of those software packages might not have been aware of one another, but when packages want to live in the same package manager, some kind of decision must be made. In MacPorts we might initially mark the two packages as conflicting with one another, which makes it impossible for the user to install both simultaneously; this usually invites complaints from users fairly rapidly. The other option is to install the programs into different directories, but that's not very satisfactory either because it makes the user modify their PATH or call the programs by their absolute path, and requires them to be aware of the conflict. Other times we might rename one of the programs, like Debian have done. Whichever program is renamed, that package's developers are likely to be unhappy about it, and for us at least, which one gets renamed is could be determined by which one has been in MacPorts the longest, which one is depended on the most within MacPorts, which one was developed first, or even which one is more popular.
The best solution of all would be for one of the upstream developers to rename their program so that the name collision no longer exists. What would speak against officially renaming the "node" binary to "nodejs"? I understand the reluctance to make changes for no reason, but this change would have a reason: it would fix the name collision, and would make the program name less generic and more recognizable. Possibly even more searchable on e.g. Google. We're not 1.0 yet; it's not too late to make changes like this. One way to handle the transition gracefully would be for 0.9.x/0.10.x to rename the binary to nodejs and also install a node -> nodejs symlink. Encourage developers and users at that time to use "nodejs" instead of "node". In 0.11.x/0.12.x, make nodejs print a warning if it's invoked as "node". And in some future version, remove the "node" symlink. On Jul 12, 2012, at 18:26, Mark Hahn wrote: > So they have chosen who gets to use what name? That is insane. It will > never work. There will be web pages for the rest of time telling how to > "fix" a node installation on debian. > > I'm new to the linux community. Has this been tried before, and did it work? -- Job Board: http://jobs.nodejs.org/ Posting guidelines: https://github.com/joyent/node/wiki/Mailing-List-Posting-Guidelines You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "nodejs" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/nodejs?hl=en?hl=en
