Program names and "pollution"

Posted Apr 3, 2019 14:48 UTC (Wed) by cortana (subscriber, #24596)
In reply to: Program names and "pollution" by rfunk
Parent article: Program names and "pollution"

I'm afraid that would break for people who use util-linux's 'pg' command as their PAGER.

Program names and "pollution"

Posted Apr 3, 2019 14:56 UTC (Wed) by rfunk (subscriber, #4054) [Link] (2 responses)

Fine, call it pgcmd or anything. The specific name (of the command or the directory) isn't important.

Program names and "pollution"

Posted Apr 4, 2019 17:28 UTC (Thu) by zdzichu (subscriber, #17118) [Link] (1 responses)

pgctl

Program names and "pollution"

Posted Apr 9, 2019 22:54 UTC (Tue) by flussence (guest, #85566) [Link]

Why not both? And to keep things interesting, have them both implement similar functionality, but differ in behaviour just enough to have one completely break when used outside of a completely default setup.

/me glares in pulseaudio's general direction...

Program names and "pollution"

Posted Apr 4, 2019 16:42 UTC (Thu) by perennialmind (guest, #45817) [Link]

Well that's just awful. pg would otherwise be the obvious choice. It's certainly the first thing I'd try tabbing at the console. Actually, thinking back, I think I did exactly that years ago and was peeved to realize what I'd stepped in. Postgres deserves a two-letter namespace prefix. Thankfully most distros have cleared the stinking pile off the path long ago and Debian derivatives will soon.

Whatever anchor they choose, I'll add an alias of my own. pg createuser just feels right.

Program names and "pollution"

Posted Apr 4, 2019 17:23 UTC (Thu) by perennialmind (guest, #45817) [Link]

Those people are already having to adapt. It's been deprecated in util-linux since util-linux v2.23, released in 2013 and hasn't been built by default since v2.29, released in 2016. After 2016, Debian, Ubuntu and Slackware were the outliers still shipping /usr/bin/pg. After Buster is releases as as Debian 10 this year, it'll just be Slackware.