Subject: Re: "Read my lips: no more merges" - aka Linux 2.6.14-rc1

From: Christian Meder <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 16 Sep 2005 00:08:12 +0200

On Thu, 2005-09-15 at 11:15 -0700, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> 
> On Thu, 15 Sep 2005, David Kågedal wrote:
> > 
> > No, you read my message wrong, or I failed to describe it properly.
> 
> No, I did get it.
> 
> It's the Debian people who don't get it.
> 
> Expecting other software projects to make cludges for Debian-specific 
> packages is _insane_.

Actually according to Debian policy, sensible-pager is a cludge which
should be used _only_ in the case that the upstream program is hard to
adapt to a PAGER environment approach. Only in this case the upstream
package should be patched to at least use sensible-pager.

> 
> In other word, no sane package will ever use "sensible-pager", because
> it's not a sensible thing to do. Once Debian maintainers are "Big Poo-Bah
> And OverLord of the KnownUniverse" and can force everybody else to have
> "sensible-pager" too, maybe -then- it might make sense, but until then
> it's just an odd-ball Debian thing that makes Debian maintainers either
> (a) maintain stupid patches to teach other programs about it or (b) have 
> normal programs that use the _standard_ pagers in the absense of $PAGER.
> 
> And like it or not, there are two standard pages: "more" and "less". In 
> the immortal words: "To two shall you count. You shall not count to one, 
> except on your way to two. And you shall definitely NOT count to three, 
> not call it 'sensible-pager'".
> 
> The fact is, we HAVE a sensible-pager, and it is called "less".
> 
> And for old programs that assume that sensible-pager is "more", we either 
> install that _too_, or we make a symlink that points to "less".

Debian prefers to call the symlink "pager" and let the sysadmin decide
where it should point: less, more, whatever. The e2fsprogs upstream
package for instance supports PAGER->/usr/bin/pager->/usr/bin/less.
Granted /usr/bin/pager is probably Debian only but every upstream author
deciding whether to use PAGER:more or PAGER:less is not _that_ much
better. 

Just wanted to nitpick. Now you can reignite your flamethrower ;-) 

				Christian

> 
> And for people who want something else, everybody already supports the 
> STANDARD way of saying so: "$PAGER".
> 
> In other words, "sensible-pager" buys you absolutely _nothing_. Except for 
> confusion and extra work.
> 
> > The advantage is, I guess, consistency.  Different programs don't have
> > to encode their own default pager.
> 
> No. That's NOT an advantage. It's a disadvantage. Different programs sure 
> as hell will not do silly Debian-only things, so it just means that if 
> Debian tries to enforce this, they're only causing more work for their own 
> maintainers.
> 
> They're also causing more work and discomfort for their users, since now 
> their users will have to live with the fact that they are used to 
> non-standard behaviour.
> 
> And it has _zero_ upsides. Exactly because it's not standard. There's a 
> lot to be said for "do it like others do it".
> 
> 			Linus
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-- 
Christian Meder, email: [email-masked]

The Way-Seeking Mind of a tenzo is actualized 
by rolling up your sleeves.

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