FS#2767 - coreutils contains redundant binaries

Attached to Project: Arch Linux
Opened by Kenny Stauffer (staufk) - Thursday, 26 May 2005, 00:32 GMT
Task Type Bug Report
Category Packages: Current
Status Closed
Assigned To Judd Vinet (judd)
Architecture not specified
Severity Low
Priority Normal
Reported Version 0.7 Wombat
Due in Version Undecided
Due Date Undecided
Percent Complete 0%
Votes 0
Private No

Details

coreutils-5.2.1-5 contains /bin/dir, /bin/vdir, and /bin/ls. dir and vdir are the same as ls except that they accept a subset of the switches of ls (~50 compared to ~80). vdir is "dir -l", so those two certainly aren't needed. And everyone uses ls anyway. Perhaps a symlink (dir -> ls) and a shell script (vdir is "#!/bin/sh dir -l") would suffice. Redundancy is not elegant.
This task depends upon

Closed by  Judd Vinet (judd)
Wednesday, 24 August 2005, 21:23 GMT
Reason for closing:  Not a bug
Comment by Kenny Stauffer (staufk) - Thursday, 26 May 2005, 00:34 GMT
Addendum: vdir is "#!/bin/sh ls -l"
Comment by Jürgen Hötzel (juergen) - Friday, 27 May 2005, 06:39 GMT
This comes up regulary on the cureutils mailing list. Please read:

http://www.gnu.org/prep/standards/html_node/User-Interfaces.html

...
Please don't make the behavior of a utility depend on the name used to invoke it. It is useful sometimes to make a link to a utility with a different name, and that should not change what it does.
...

This is not a (Arch) Bug.

Jürgen

Loading...