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

On Thu, 2005-09-15 at 11:15 -0700, Linus Torvalds wrote:

On Thu, 15 Sep 2005, David Kågedal wrote:

quoted

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.

quoted

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: chris@absolutegiganten.org

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

                (Eihei Dogen Zenji)