Re: removal of kill?

[Pádraig Brady]

On 09/11/15 19:20, Pádraig Brady wrote:
> On 09/11/15 16:58, Pádraig Brady wrote:
>> On 09/11/15 16:48, Jim Meyering wrote:
>>> On Mon, Nov 9, 2015 at 8:07 AM, Pádraig Brady <address@hidden> wrote:
>>>> On 09/11/15 16:02, Bernhard Voelker wrote:
>>>>> On 11/09/2015 04:27 PM, Pádraig Brady wrote:
>>>>>> I see on most GNU/Linux distros that kill(1) is
>>>>>> provided by the shell or util-linux.
>>>>>> Should we just remove it from coreutils?
>>>>>
>>>>> What about non-Linux systems, i.e., where util-linux is not
>>>>> available?  I personally don't have such a system, but I think
>>>>> GNU software should not forget about such platforms.
>>>>
>>>> Absolutely. Though in this case the shells cater
>>>> for kill(1), or the platform already provides it.
>>>
>>> Note that POSIX requires an 'exec'able kill program.
>>> I.e., the shell-provided one is insufficient when you want to
>>> invoke it via a program like xargs.
>>
>> OK I'll assume for now that platforms
>> might not have a separate kill program,
>> and move it to disabled_by_default_progs.

On second thoughts we might continue to build kill,
since there seems to be quite a bit of divergence on how
-l is handled at least:

GNU> /bin/kill -l HUP
1
solaris> /bin/kill -l HUP
1
freebsd> /bin/kill -l HUP
error, usage is...
util-linux> /bin/kill -l HUP
HUP
debian-procps> /bin/kill -l HUP
HUP INT QUIT ..
debian-procps> /bin/kill -l 1
HUP INT QUIT ..

The procps handling of `kill -l 1` seems to contravene POSIX.

I also notice that GNU kill is used with kfreebsd on debian.

For these reasons I might just keep the test cleanups
from my previous patch but continue to build kill by default?

cheers,
Pádraig