LinuxWorld wraps up (NewsForge) [LWN.net]

NewsForge has a final LinuxWorld report. "During the last session, Kroah-Hartman gave a presentation on doing kernel version control with Quilt, Ketchup, and Git. As it turned out, Quilt and Git are actually useful for other projects as well, and Ketchup also looks like it could be useful for admins, so the presentation was of value for those of us who aren't kernel developers."

to post comments

Quilt, Ketchup, and Git

Posted Aug 18, 2006 20:04 UTC (Fri) by rfunk (subscriber, #4054) [Link] (13 responses)

It's probably just me, but I yearn for the old days when program names
were all-lowercase and not real words, while still often giving an idea
of what they do. It seems like theres a trend toward naming programs
with capitalized Real Words that makes me vaguely uncomfortable.

Quilt, Ketchup, and Git

Posted Aug 18, 2006 20:45 UTC (Fri) by niner (guest, #26151) [Link] (4 responses)

It's even worse in German. "Ketchup" for example is the exact spelling of the sauce the program was named after. In English there's at least a difference between the word and the name.

Ketchup

Posted Aug 18, 2006 21:03 UTC (Fri) by rfunk (subscriber, #4054) [Link]

In English it can be spelled either ketchup or catsup, and I think
ketchup is the more common spelling.

Quilt, Ketchup, and Git

Posted Aug 18, 2006 21:05 UTC (Fri) by rfunk (subscriber, #4054) [Link]

Oh wait, you're including capitalization as part of the spelling. I
forgot about that aspect of German. Now I get your point.

Quilt, Ketchup, and Git

Posted Aug 18, 2006 21:05 UTC (Fri) by ajross (guest, #4563) [Link] (1 responses)

I always assumed that it was a pun on "catch up", no?

Quilt, Ketchup, and Git

Posted Aug 19, 2006 4:36 UTC (Sat) by ronaldcole (guest, #1462) [Link]

Never seen the movie "Pulp Fiction?"

Quilt, Ketchup, and Git

Posted Aug 18, 2006 21:05 UTC (Fri) by arcticwolf (guest, #8341) [Link] (2 responses)

Quilt: weaves patches together. Ketchup: allows you to catch up (get it?). I'm pretty sure "Git" also is an acronym for something (although maybe a less than official one), but buggered if I recall what it was. In any case, it's not as if someone decided to use a hip new name with no connection to what the program actually does.

Quilt, Ketchup, and Git

Posted Aug 18, 2006 21:12 UTC (Fri) by rfunk (subscriber, #4054) [Link] (1 responses)

Oh, I get that completely. But that's tangential to my point, which is
admittedly somewhat silly anyway.

Maybe it's just that after being a Unix/Linux user for 15 years I have an
aversion to capital letters, and a somewhat lesser aversion to program
names that have meaning outside their context. Combining both attributes
together seems to be a recent trend in the free software world.

Quilt, Ketchup, and Git

Posted Aug 18, 2006 21:30 UTC (Fri) by dark (guest, #8483) [Link]

I don't think it's recent. I think you just didn't notice. The trend goes back as far as "GNU" :)

Which reminds me of Bison and Flex. And yes, the FSF capitalizes them that way :) The names of the binaries are lowercase, but that goes for ketchup and git too.

Then there's Ruby and Python... Apache, with its host of related projects like Tomcat and Ant... The unusual case of LaTeX... I suspect I could go on all day :)

Quilt, Ketchup, and Git

Posted Aug 18, 2006 21:31 UTC (Fri) by AJWM (guest, #15888) [Link] (1 responses)

> I yearn for the old days when program names were all-lowercase and not real words

What, you mean like cat, bash, vim, tar, wish and X? ;-)

Quilt, Ketchup, and Git

Posted Aug 18, 2006 21:51 UTC (Fri) by rfunk (subscriber, #4054) [Link]

OK, how about "and/or". :-)

I like "xpdf" or "emacs" as canonical examples, though some would argue
about their capitalizations.

Quilt, Ketchup, and Git

Posted Aug 18, 2006 22:20 UTC (Fri) by gregkh (subscriber, #8) [Link] (2 responses)

"quilt", "ketchup", and "git" are all lower case named tools.

No one is raising the case on any of these tool names anytime soon, I don't
know why you got that impression.

Quilt, Ketchup, and Git

Posted Aug 18, 2006 23:13 UTC (Fri) by rfunk (subscriber, #4054) [Link] (1 responses)

Maybe from the text quoted from the article?

"During the last session, Kroah-Hartman gave a presentation on doing
kernel version control with Quilt, Ketchup, and Git. As it turned out,
Quilt and Git are actually useful for other projects as well, and Ketchup
also looks like it could be useful for admins"

Quilt, Ketchup, and Git

Posted Aug 19, 2006 1:01 UTC (Sat) by louie (guest, #3285) [Link]

Good thing old school programs like Emacs and Linux aren't capitalized when discussing the projects... oh, wait. :) (Seriously, check out gnu.org/software/emacs/ or any significant Linux page.)