Re: Bug#597571: nodejs: non common executable name (exclusive alternatives ?)
On Thu, 23 Sep 2010 01:32:21 +0200 Jérémy Lal je...@edagames.com wrote: On 23/09/2010 01:24, Ian Jackson wrote: Jérémy Lal writes (Re: Bug#597571: nodejs: non common executable name (exclusive alternatives ?)): On might object node would have a different meaning, depending on the packages installed ; still, nodejs or x25node (if its maintainer cares to follow) would be there, and unambiguous. I think this kind of horrendous stuff should not be done in packages and certainly not by just installing them. If the sysadmin really hates it so much, they can ln -s /usr/bin/nodejs /usr/local/bin/node surely ? Of course, then i guess it's ok to put this in the description ? Ummm, no. Any sysadmin who doesn't know about 'ln -s' shouldn't be a sysadmin any longer. It's not the job of the package description to educate the user, it just describes the package. These naming conflicts are not new, packages just have to rename their executables. There have always been complaints about user scripts and other tools etc. but the answer is the same: rename the executables and document this in README.Debian or the manpage. Blame upstream - and direct users to complain to upstream too. I fear most people won't read README.Debian. Nevertheless, that is an appropriate place for this information if you really think that your users will not think of it themselves. Alternatively, put it in the manpage. -- Neil Williams = http://www.data-freedom.org/ http://www.linux.codehelp.co.uk/ http://e-mail.is-not-s.ms/ pgptZXA9TNiRU.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Bug#597571: nodejs: non common executable name (exclusive alternatives ?)
On 21/09/2010 18:01, Patrick Ouellette wrote: On Tue, Sep 21, 2010 at 05:26:30PM +0200, Mehdi Dogguy wrote: Did you say that before? I don't think so. Personally, I care about the Debian package only because the original bugreport (from where this discussion started) was against the Debian package and for a Debian specificity, not about the genericity of the name used for the shipped binary. Part of the historical discussion on debian-hams and Jéré mentioned it in this thread today. Pat To sump up view points from upstream and from debian : *it's your problem* Maybe a solution would be to define a kind of exclusive alternative : if one wants some node link, that points to /usr/sbin/node (x)or to /usr/bin/nodejs, he could choose which one's the best in a postinst routine, common to both packages. On might object node would have a different meaning, depending on the packages installed ; still, nodejs or x25node (if its maintainer cares to follow) would be there, and unambiguous. Do that notion of exclusive alternatives is insane, or been discussed before ? Jérémy. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/4c9a7fc0.3040...@edagames.com
Re: Bug#597571: nodejs: non common executable name (exclusive alternatives ?)
Jérémy Lal writes (Re: Bug#597571: nodejs: non common executable name (exclusive alternatives ?)): On might object node would have a different meaning, depending on the packages installed ; still, nodejs or x25node (if its maintainer cares to follow) would be there, and unambiguous. I think this kind of horrendous stuff should not be done in packages and certainly not by just installing them. If the sysadmin really hates it so much, they can ln -s /usr/bin/nodejs /usr/local/bin/node surely ? Ian. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/19610.36900.786289.318...@chiark.greenend.org.uk
Re: Bug#597571: nodejs: non common executable name (exclusive alternatives ?)
On 23/09/2010 01:24, Ian Jackson wrote: Jérémy Lal writes (Re: Bug#597571: nodejs: non common executable name (exclusive alternatives ?)): On might object node would have a different meaning, depending on the packages installed ; still, nodejs or x25node (if its maintainer cares to follow) would be there, and unambiguous. I think this kind of horrendous stuff should not be done in packages and certainly not by just installing them. If the sysadmin really hates it so much, they can ln -s /usr/bin/nodejs /usr/local/bin/node surely ? Of course, then i guess it's ok to put this in the description ? I fear most people won't read README.Debian. Jérémy. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/4c9a9205.3070...@edagames.com
Re: Bug#597571: nodejs: non common executable name
On 21/09/2010 02:00, Carl Fürstenberg wrote: 2010/9/21 Jérémy Lal je...@edagames.com: I also contacted debian-hams to see if they'd mind changing this binary name, and the answer is clearly no [1]. [1] http://lists.debian.org/debian-hams/2010/08/msg00031.html i posted a reply yesterday to that thread : http://lists.debian.org/debian-hams/2010/09/msg00015.html Jérémy. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/4c985cc0.1080...@edagames.com
Re: Bug#597571: nodejs: non common executable name
Carl Fürstenberg writes (Re: Bug#597571: nodejs: non common executable name): Policy only states The maintainers should report this to the debian-devel mailing list and try to find a consensus about which program will have to be renamed. If a consensus cannot be reached, both programs must be renamed.; I don't see any consensus in the thread you linked to, so technically both must change at the moment :) I wrote that bit of the policy and my intent was to try to punish people for picking stupid names. Yes, both binaries should be renamed. node is a ridiculous name for a specific-purpose executable. Ian. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/19608.43395.371240.670...@chiark.greenend.org.uk
Re: Bug#597571: nodejs: non common executable name
On Tue, Sep 21, 2010 at 01:48:03PM +0100, Ian Jackson wrote: Carl Fürstenberg writes (Re: Bug#597571: nodejs: non common executable name): Policy only states The maintainers should report this to the debian-devel mailing list and try to find a consensus about which program will have to be renamed. If a consensus cannot be reached, both programs must be renamed.; I don't see any consensus in the thread you linked to, so technically both must change at the moment :) I wrote that bit of the policy and my intent was to try to punish people for picking stupid names. In this case, and many others, the only people punished are the Debian packagers and users. The packagers because they have to create patches to rename the binaries, and the users because the name is not the same for either package in Debian as it is on other distros. Yes, both binaries should be renamed. node is a ridiculous name for a specific-purpose executable. At this point in time I would agree. Twenty or so years ago when the ax25 software was first being developed, node adequately described the binary's function and was not so common a term. We had a similar issue not that long ago with the ax25 package listen. It had been in Debian for a long time and then someone wanted to upload something new that was also named listen. Initially the ax25 package name was kept, but later it was changed to axlisten and the (created much later) audio player was allowed to keep the name. Pat -- Patrick Ouellette p...@flying-gecko.net ne4po (at) arrl (dot) net Amateur Radio: NE4PO What kind of change have you been in the world today? signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Bug#597571: nodejs: non common executable name
On 21/09/2010 14:48, Ian Jackson wrote: Carl Fürstenberg writes (Re: Bug#597571: nodejs: non common executable name): Policy only states The maintainers should report this to the debian-devel mailing list and try to find a consensus about which program will have to be renamed. If a consensus cannot be reached, both programs must be renamed.; I don't see any consensus in the thread you linked to, so technically both must change at the moment :) I wrote that bit of the policy and my intent was to try to punish people for picking stupid names. Yes, both binaries should be renamed. node is a ridiculous name for a specific-purpose executable. Wrong. nodejs still provides the binary nodejs and not _node_. So, nodejs can stay as is. The rename would be necessary if both packages provide the same binary (same filename), which is not the case here. Please read again the bit of the policy you wrote. Regards, -- Mehdi Dogguy مهدي الدڤي http://dogguy.org/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/4c98b921.1080...@dogguy.org
Re: Bug#597571: nodejs: non common executable name
Mehdi Dogguy writes (Re: Bug#597571: nodejs: non common executable name): Wrong. nodejs still provides the binary nodejs and not _node_. So, nodejs can stay as is. The rename would be necessary if both packages provide the same binary (same filename), which is not the case here. Sorry, when I wrote in my posting by both binaries should be renamed I meant neither binary should be called `node'. Please read again the bit of the policy you wrote. I was trying (and failing, sorry) to explain the reasoning behind the policy, rather than insisting on the strict letter of its interpretation. I don't think the fact that the nodejs maintainer already renamed their binary right from the beginning excuses the behaviour of the node maintainer. (node is a really bad package name, too.) So /usr/sbin/node from the node package should be renamed IMO. Ian. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/19608.48023.679605.322...@chiark.greenend.org.uk
Re: Bug#597571: nodejs: non common executable name
Note that i tried to warn upstream nodejs several months ago, but it was already too late, so i renamed it to comply. Please also note that nodejs runs (js) scripts, so the renaming means each nodejs module[0] that may be packaged in the future, and that provides executables, will need to be patched accordingly. User scripts are at stake, too, and users are probably going to manually link nodejs to node. Nowadays nodejs users are mostly downloading the package from some ubuntu's ppa, instead of the debian package, because of that renaming problem. Jérémy. [0] http://github.com/ry/node/wiki/modules -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/4c98bf99.9070...@edagames.com
Re: Bug#597571: nodejs: non common executable name
On 21/09/2010 16:02, Patrick Ouellette wrote: On Tue, Sep 21, 2010 at 03:54:41PM +0200, Mehdi Dogguy wrote: Wrong. nodejs still provides the binary nodejs and not _node_. So, nodejs can stay as is. The rename would be necessary if both packages provide the same binary (same filename), which is not the case here. Actually, from the discussion in debian-hams, nodejs provides a binary named node - otherwise we would not need to have the discussion at all since there would be no conflict. Wrong. nodejs's maintainer wants to rename bin/nodejs to bin/node… that's why there was the discussion on debian-hams. (But then, whether the rename is appropriate is another story… IMO, it's not appropriate because the name is too generic. And as Ian already pointed out, even node should be renamed). $ dpkg -L nodejs | grep bin/ /usr/bin/nodejs Regards, -- Mehdi Dogguy مهدي الدڤي http://dogguy.org/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/4c98ca3b.3000...@dogguy.org
Re: Bug#597571: nodejs: non common executable name
On Tue, Sep 21, 2010 at 03:54:41PM +0200, Mehdi Dogguy wrote: Wrong. nodejs still provides the binary nodejs and not _node_. So, nodejs can stay as is. The rename would be necessary if both packages provide the same binary (same filename), which is not the case here. Actually, from the discussion in debian-hams, nodejs provides a binary named node - otherwise we would not need to have the discussion at all since there would be no conflict. -- Patrick Ouellette p...@flying-gecko.net ne4po (at) arrl (dot) net Amateur Radio: NE4PO What kind of change have you been in the world today? -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20100921140225.gb26...@flying-gecko.net
Re: Bug#597571: nodejs: non common executable name
On 21/09/2010 17:22, Patrick Ouellette wrote: You are quick with the wrong button. It's my new toy :) The UPSTREAM nodejs is /usr/bin/node. The Debian package renamed it to nodejs. Did you say that before? I don't think so. Personally, I care about the Debian package only because the original bugreport (from where this discussion started) was against the Debian package and for a Debian specificity, not about the genericity of the name used for the shipped binary. Regards, -- Mehdi Dogguy مهدي الدڤي http://dogguy.org/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/4c98cea6.8080...@dogguy.org
Re: Bug#597571: nodejs: non common executable name
On Tue, Sep 21, 2010 at 05:07:39PM +0200, Mehdi Dogguy wrote: On 21/09/2010 16:02, Patrick Ouellette wrote: On Tue, Sep 21, 2010 at 03:54:41PM +0200, Mehdi Dogguy wrote: Wrong. nodejs still provides the binary nodejs and not _node_. So, nodejs can stay as is. The rename would be necessary if both packages provide the same binary (same filename), which is not the case here. Actually, from the discussion in debian-hams, nodejs provides a binary named node - otherwise we would not need to have the discussion at all since there would be no conflict. Wrong. nodejs's maintainer wants to rename bin/nodejs to bin/node… that's why there was the discussion on debian-hams. (But then, whether the rename is appropriate is another story… IMO, it's not appropriate because the name is too generic. And as Ian already pointed out, even node should be renamed). $ dpkg -L nodejs | grep bin/ /usr/bin/nodejs You are quick with the wrong button. The UPSTREAM nodejs is /usr/bin/node. The Debian package renamed it to nodejs. -- Patrick Ouellette p...@flying-gecko.net ne4po (at) arrl (dot) net Amateur Radio: NE4PO What kind of change have you been in the world today? -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20100921152247.ga14...@flying-gecko.net
Re: Bug#597571: nodejs: non common executable name
On Tue, Sep 21, 2010 at 05:26:30PM +0200, Mehdi Dogguy wrote: Did you say that before? I don't think so. Personally, I care about the Debian package only because the original bugreport (from where this discussion started) was against the Debian package and for a Debian specificity, not about the genericity of the name used for the shipped binary. Part of the historical discussion on debian-hams and Jéré mentioned it in this thread today. Pat -- Patrick Ouellette p...@flying-gecko.net ne4po (at) arrl (dot) net Amateur Radio: NE4PO What kind of change have you been in the world today? -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20100921160102.gb14...@flying-gecko.net
Re: Bug#597571: nodejs: non common executable name
2010/9/21 Jérémy Lal je...@edagames.com: On 21/09/2010 01:31, Carl Fürstenberg wrote: On Tue, Sep 21, 2010 at 00:46, Jérémy Lal je...@edagames.com wrote: On 21/09/2010 00:27, Carl Fürstenberg wrote: Package: nodejs Version: 0.2.2-1 Severity: normal in debian, the executable name is set to nodejs; this seems to be really uncommon out in the wild, where it's assumed it's called node for short. Unless there is a compelling reason for sticking with the name nodejs, I would want the package to change the name of the executable to node, or at least add an alias for it. The only reason is because there's already a package providing a node binary in debian [0]. I also contacted debian-hams to see if they'd mind changing this binary name, and the answer is clearly no [1]. So for now, i guess conflicting with node package is the only alternative. However, i doubt it will be accepted. Do this reason for a conflict have already been accepted in the archive ? [0] http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/08/msg00568.html [1] http://lists.debian.org/debian-hams/2010/08/msg00031.html Don't know if it's a valid source, but according to popcon, nodejs http://qa.debian.org/popcon.php?package=nodejs is more popular now than node http://qa.debian.org/popcon.php?package=node I noticed. Unfortunately it's not. Feel free to submit any idea about that problem ! Jérémy. Policy only states The maintainers should report this to the debian-devel mailing list and try to find a consensus about which program will have to be renamed. If a consensus cannot be reached, both programs must be renamed.; I don't see any consensus in the thread you linked to, so technically both must change at the moment :) I do CC -devel though, so we can see what their input is on this issue. (the reply from Ray Wells felt really single sided and unconstructive). -- /Carl Fürstenberg azat...@gmail.com -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/aanlkti=wzcmlsotoxoe4az5joztfc2z0-oaerpcnq...@mail.gmail.com
