On 02/12/10 03:16 PM, Nicolas Williams wrote:
On Fri, Feb 12, 2010 at 01:10:30PM -0600, Shawn Walker wrote:
On 02/12/10 11:59 AM, Nicolas Williams wrote:
Far simpler: require an explicit option in order to operate on images
other than /. Make / the default image.
Yes, that's an admin-centric point of view.
I don't see the issue in allowing a user explicit control over the
behaviour via an 'rc' file. Please elaborate on why users should be
forced to type -R over and over again if their primary usage pattern is
centered around something other than '/'.
We can have explicit options for when you want to name a specific image.
The question is whether to provide a default, and if so, what that
default should be.
This whole thread is about the current default being surprising, and
possibly harmful. The proposed alternative defaults so far don't see to
address that question. I think it's far more important to make the
default be -R / for the simple reason that it solves the problem
trivially without a chance of there being more confusion in the future.
I disagree that they don't address that question. In one scenario, the
user has no control over the behaviour and has not expressed any
explicit intent whatsoever about what image they use.
My assertion is that an rc file is little different than setting
PKG_IMAGE in terms of user intent and by your own assertion environment
variables are evil, so isn't an rc file a better alternative? :)
I don't see how having an rc file that lets *you* as a user decide
whether your universe is '/'-centric or user-image centric as an
unreasonable compromise.
If users today were accustomed to operating on user images, however,
it'd be much harder to change the default -- the whole point is that
that which users _today_ would most commonly expect to be the default
should be the default.
If you're a glassfish user, you are used to it ;)
I disagree; we need a reasonable compromise here that can accommodate
both privileged and unprivileged users.
You're also implicitly adding a requirement: that administration of
bootable images and user images be on equal turf in terms of "CLI
characters to type" or some such. I wouldn't make that a requirement,
which is why we disagree. One possible compromise might be to add a
link alias of pkg(1) that, for the price of one additional character,
gives you a default that is reasonable for user images, say, upkg(1).
Which then leads to the inevitable complaint that they mistakenly typed
'upkg' instead of 'pkg' and hardly seems any better to me.
--
Shawn Walker
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