gnu ports

[Jordan K. Hubbard]

I think you'll find that pretty much every proposed namespace- 
mangling approach pretty much sucks.  Apple uses the "gnu" prefix in  
all of two of its GNU binaries - gnumake and gnutar.  That said,  
nobody at all uses them that way.  They use "make", which is GNU  
make, and "tar", which is GNU tar.  The aliases we create are  
essentially useless.  Someday we may swap out gnutar for BSD tar and  
the intended "interface" will still be called "tar", we won't expect  
people to use gnutar or bsdtar as a disambiguating term.

Also, if the GPLv3 becomes widely adopted and many people react as  
predicted ("Arrrrrrghhhhhhh!!!!"), I suspect the GNU tools will be  
relegated to their own entire hierarchy, just to keep them from  
infecting anything by mistake.  In the case of system providers, that  
hierarchy might be /usr/gnu.  In the case of MacPorts, it might be / 
opt/local/gnu/bin, /opt/local/gnu/lib, etc.

I don't know any of this for sure, of course, I'm merely  
speculating.  Either way, it might not be worth putting a whole lot  
of time and effort into mangling names with something like this on  
the horizon - why change the world twice?

- Jordan

On Feb 27, 2007, at 12:58 AM, Elias Pipping wrote:

> My point was not only to draw attention to the matter but
> also to encourage you to propose a convention. Since that
> approach has failed I'll come up with a proposal:
>
> I see it this way:
>
>  * Yes, there should be a prefix for gnu ports
>  * Yes, that prefix should be the same for the installed
>    binary and the portname
>  * No, it should not be "g" (easier to distinguish from
>    gnome ports)
>  * 'gnu' would be a possibility. The only conflict would
>    be with gnuplot, which is not gnu software. but I guess
>    that's possible to live with.
>
> Any opinion on this matter, anyone?
>
>
> Regards,
>
> Elias Pipping
>
>
> On Feb 26, 2007, at 5:38 PM, Elias Pipping wrote:
>
>> There are some inconsistencies when it comes to gnu ports
>>
>> e.g.:
>>
>>   "tar" goes by the name "gnutar". its executable is called "gnutar"
>>   "sed" goes by the name   "gsed". its executable is called "gnused"
>> "which" goes by the name "gwhich". its executable is called "gwhich"
>>
>>
>> Regards,
>>
>> Elias Pipping
>>
>>
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