Features where their non inclusion was unable to be met due to
pre-existing usage and where using or allowing behavior change based
on ENV vars was disallowed due to new gnu policies to minimize usage
of ENV vars. At the time config files were mentioned as a possible
solution but at the time I was told there would be no more config files.
Now I'm seeing references to /etc/xattr.conf regarding which attributes
should be copied and which not when utils like 'cp' or 'tar' preserve
or restore xattrs. If you don't allow a config, how will you skip
attributes that shouldn't be copied on a given system vs. those that should?
As for random features being added, paul, who was it that added a random
range feature incompatible with what was original suggested and going off
in a different direction. You created an incompatible feature to the one that
was originally proposed... so this is to allow a workaround for
for malicious features rushed to build to disallow alternate sets. It's
not about a new random one, but one that you specifically found an
alternate and incompatible algorithm for. It certainly is no more of
a random feature than the collection of new features that has gone
into random coreutils programs in the past year or two -- many of which,
like with 'ls' were strongly complained about -- and ignored.
Those people who don't like the new, unwelcomed 'features' forced upon them
would have a choice.