Re: [kernel.org users] [RFD] On deprecating "git-foo" for builtins

From: David Woodhouse <dwmw2@infradead.org>
Date: Aug 26, 2008, 15:59 UTC
Message-ID: <1219766398.7107.87.camel@pmac.infradead.org>
In-Reply-To: <1219764860.4471.13.camel@gaara.bos.redhat.com>

On Tue, 2008-08-26 at 11:34 -0400, Kristian Høgsberg wrote:

Show 7 quoted lines

> It's pretty normal to see opponents of a decision like this complain
> loudly when it lands on their system, whereas the silent majority in
> favour will be happy to see the change finally implemented but reluctant
> to stir up the discussion again.
> 
> I don't think new arguments are brought to the discussion, just new
> people, who are temporarily inconvened by a change towards sanity.

Nice emotive response, especially the subtle but unsubstantiated 'silent majority in favour' bit -- but you forgot the part where you were supposed to actually point out a tangible benefit which is achieved by breaking compatibility like this.

And no, reducing the size of /usr/bin by a tiny fraction isn't really a worthwhile benefit -- in reality, the 'silent majority' really couldn't give a monkey's left testicle about that, and breakage caused by the gratuitous change _far_ outweighs any minuscule improvement.

It's particularly silly because we could have just made these aliases optional but present by default, so those few nutters who _really_ spend their days worrying about such stuff can do without them.

-- 
David Woodhouse                            Open Source Technology Centre
David.Woodhouse@intel.com                              Intel Corporation