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Debian's Which Hunt

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Re: Debian's Which Hunt

#141

Post by denton-scratch »

tannhaeuser wrote: post #136
denton-scratch wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. I have no gripe about the process. (Well, I don't think it was a technical decision, so it shouldn't have been dumped on the TC). It was pellucidly transparent. Exemplary, really. I just really don't like systemd, so I'm sorry that it became the Debian default init. My gripe is with the outcome, not the process. Most package-maintainers must have disagreed with me. It's OK, I'm used to people not agreeing with m…

Out of interest, are you using Devuan or other Debian distro specifically designed to be systemd-free?

Not Devuan, normal vanilla Debian (and one Debian-Xen VM host).

There are instructions online for removing systemd; I think it is cause for regret that there isn't an install option and a commandline tool to "just do it". It's not tricky; it's just a nuisance that you have to do it at all.

[Edit] And a debconfig thing. It should be that easy to switch.

[Edit 2] I deserve to be voted down, I realise! I called for a change that I claimed was easy, without offering a patch! I should shut up, and my remarks should be very pale grey.

Re: Debian's Which Hunt

#142

Post by gnubison »

guerrilla wrote: post #61
Taywee wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that `which` behaves differently in many different existing use-cases (sometimes reporting aliases and sometimes not). If POSIX defines the behavior, then many existing uses become non-standard, and the existing implementations have to decide to change to become standard and possibly break backward compatibility or remain the same and stay non-standard.

In that case, pick the system which is statistically dominant and clone that. That'd be GNU first and FreeBSD second. The standard can be some subset of their behavior.

That’s not usually how standards are supposed to work — a POSIX operating system should not reimplement Linux, it should only have to reimplement what’s portable to existing systems.

Re: Debian's Which Hunt

#143

Post by gnubison »

sneak wrote: post #108
pornel wrote: post #45

I'm a descriptivist when it comes to standards. When everyone uses `which`, POSIX should add it. "but it's non-standard!" can be fixed by making it a standard.

Also, POSIX is basically irrelevant now. There are only two Unixen that anyone uses: RMS/Linux and whatever outdated garbage userspace Apple is shipping with macOS.

Maybe one day you’ll try out OpenBSD and find that you actually like it… and then you’ll be hit by the force of hundreds of thousands of software developers who subscribe to the philosophy you describe above. Standards are important — they’re the balance between a monopoly and a fragmented ecosystem, and give developers a chance to create new platforms that can innovate while supporting existing code.

Re: Debian's Which Hunt

#144

Post by pdimitar »

bachmeier wrote: post #134
overgard wrote: post #103

When I read stuff like this I can't help but wonder how anything ever even gets done on this project. The amazing thing is 'which' was working perfectly fine for everyone. Just leave it alone? The amount of time they wasted on debating this is staggering compared to just not changing it.

> When I read stuff like this I can't help but wonder how anything ever even gets done on this project. Many years ago, I posted that stable was too old. All the Debian users were quick to tell me to run testing, that it wasn't a bad experience in spite of the name. Well, after converting all my machines to Debian, a package that was critical to my work was broken and I was not at all impressed with the handling of t…

I moved on from Debian some 9-10 years ago and I haven't regretted it once. Many sysadmin acquaintances and former colleagues of mine complained that upgrading Debian is often like rolling a dice (yes, even the stable and thus fairly old variant). An innocent "apt-get upgrade" moves configuration files and/or expectations where they are, or, what's even worse, changes the config files and silently moves the previous ones to another file. This is sensible but obviously a 99% automated process run on a fleet of servers cannot detect this and those acquaintances of mine regularly had to fight with the consequences. Some even resigned when management refused to let them move to another distro. Other were more lucky and managed to move.

I am not a sysadmin and very far from an expert so my take on this is entirely anecdotal and likely partially wrong.

But ever since I moved to Manjaro (after briefly trying Arch and deciding that I don't want to build my own house brick by brick) I've only had 1-2 problems ever and they were fixed literally the day after with the next system-wide update command. The one and only exception is the last problem I had: namely an OpenSSH upgrade hard-deprecated a few signing algorithms so I was unable to SSH into my servers. And that was solved with half a minute of search on ManjaroForum. Smooth sailing.

For all the BS surrounding the "systemd vs. whatever-else-the-other-thing-was", I found the former made my life as a mid-tier Linux user and home-grown server admin much easier, too.

Re: Debian's Which Hunt

#145

Post by pmontra »

dilawar wrote: post #2

'command -v' is POSIX!! I have always avoided it in favor of which because its output doesn't feel machine friendly.

I'm not sure I knew about type. I didn't know about command -v probably because I learned which close to 35 years ago and I didn't have to look for a different way to do it.

Re: Debian's Which Hunt

#147

Post by earthscienceman »

OliverJones wrote: post #114

By this logic, we'd also rename awk to something more "meaninful" because the names of Aho, Kernighan, and Weinberger are just historical artifacts. They are indeed, but we're talking about a real-world "we all talk UNIX" language here that's been around for a long time -- perilously close to 2.14 billion seconds in fact. Lots of people and programs speak, read, and write this UNIX language. It's creeping up on natur…

Neither does French, but it doesn't stop them...

Re: Debian's Which Hunt

#148

Post by matheusmoreira »

pornel wrote: post #45

I'm a descriptivist when it comes to standards. When everyone uses `which`, POSIX should add it. "but it's non-standard!" can be fixed by making it a standard.

I don't understand why people even care about POSIX in 2021. It's not like Linux distributions are POSIX certified. So many things can't be good because it's not in POSIX or because POSIX requires something else. People actually force themselves to write scripts in some mythical POSIX shell that nobody uses.

Re: Debian's Which Hunt

#149

Post by na85 »

pdimitar wrote: post #144
bachmeier wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When I read stuff like this I can't help but wonder how anything ever even gets done on this project. Many years ago, I posted that stable was too old. All the Debian users were quick to tell me to run testing, that it wasn't a bad experience in spite of the name. Well, after converting all my machines to Debian, a package that was critical to my work was broken and I was not at all impressed with the handling of t…

I moved on from Debian some 9-10 years ago and I haven't regretted it once. Many sysadmin acquaintances and former colleagues of mine complained that upgrading Debian is often like rolling a dice (yes, even the stable and thus fairly old variant). An innocent "apt-get upgrade" moves configuration files and/or expectations where they are, or, what's even worse, changes the config files and silently moves the previous…

>or, what's even worse, changes the config files and silently moves the previous ones to another file.

I run Debian on my servers because I like not having to wrestle with Yast2 or deal with the constant churn for churn's sake of certain RPM-based distros.

The above quote hasn't really been a thing since at least Debian 8, and possibly 7. Certainly when it came time to upgrade to 11, if package configs were being overwritten I was presented with a diff and asked what I wanted to do.

Re: Debian's Which Hunt

#150

Post by StillBored »

gnubison wrote: post #142
guerrilla wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In that case, pick the system which is statistically dominant and clone that. That'd be GNU first and FreeBSD second. The standard can be some subset of their behavior.

That’s not usually how standards are supposed to work — a POSIX operating system should not reimplement Linux, it should only have to reimplement what’s portable to existing systems.

Except POSIX has historically always been the intersection of the major Unix vendors. Which is why its always been the lowest common denominator, and is largely crap as a result.

Of course to a certain extend all non defacto-standards suffer from this because invariably one group or the other doesn't want to rework their system to fit the standard so they NAK it.

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