Re: md5deep

[Bob Proulx]

Mathieu Roy wrote:
> Maybe it would be nice to include predefined aliases along with gnu
> coreutils, so users, whatever their knowlegde, can make so.

That would be a problem.  For one you are invading into the user
space.  I certainly don't want utilities like this poking things into
my personal user space.  And where would you put it?  In /etc/profile?
/home/*/.profile?  /etc/skel/.profile?  How do you handle the conflict
between different packages wanting to edit the same files.
/etc/profile.d/* has problems.  It is better not to go there.

> While with little knowledge you can prefectly understand the proposed
> command, I think it's a bad assumption to consider that all GNU/Linux
> users have this knowledge from the start.

I think for that class of user a completely different program is
better.  A GUI program which holds their hand through the process.
Something like midnight commander or some such.  A completely
different application with these types of easy user functionality
would make the most sense.

The core utilities are required utilities on /bin on most systems.
Therefore extra care needs to be taken that they don't bloat too much.
It reduces their ability to be useful on a wide range of platforms.
Already there are other programs such as busybox which implies that
the core utilities are too bloated already.  And if this functionality
were added to one command it would imply that other commands such as
also need the same functionality added to them as well multiplying the
problem.

> In RedHat, a /etc/profile.d directory exists, and /etc/profile
> "source" all files in /etc/profile.d. There no such directory in
> usual Debian installation (I created it on my boxes, since I find this
> usefull) but it can be proposed. Why not adding a
> /etc/profile.d/coreutils.sh, with usefull aliases?

See Debian bug 122817.  And I personally agree with the rationale
presented there.

I would personally object if in my ~/.profile I needed to remove junk
that the system placed there.  My environment is _my_ environment and
not yours.  Please keep your aliases out of my environment.  There is
no such thing as one size fits everyone.  However people do keep
creating "one size".  Let's avoid that if possible.  It is okay to put
them in /etc/skel/.profile and have them be suggested options to a
user if they want to enable them.  But don't clutter up the user's
environment without the user's permission.

Other people have suggested 'sysprofile' as an alternative.  I have no
experience with it myself and just note it as being related.  YMMV.

I really think what you want is a different program that handles
newbies better than the existing command line shell utilities.

Bob