Re: Zutils vs single compressor utilities

[Paul Eggert]

On 12/17/10 10:01, Antonio Diaz Diaz wrote:
> c) Adding to configure the option "--enable-scripts=no" to disable building 
> and installation of the "zscripts" (zcat, zcmp, zdiff, zgrep), without any 
> "gzscripts" (gzcat, gzcmp, gzdiff, gzgrep) replacing them.

Something like that, yes, but it's not clear that's exactly
right, from the gzip point of view.  There are many scripts:
why pick just those four?  Here's the complete list:

gunzip              zcat  zdiff   zfgrep  zgrep  zmore
gzexe   uncompress  zcmp  zegrep  zforce  zless  znew

Perhaps the operand of --enable-scripts should list just
the scripts wanted (or conversely, the operand of --disable-scripts
should list just those scripts not wanted).  Or it could give
a shell pattern for the script names.  (I'm just thinking out
loud here.  I haven't thought through how this would interact
with --program-transform-name.)

More generally, why does the installer care which programs
are scripts and which are not?  So perhaps the option should
be --enable-programs instead of --enable-scripts.