Re: [PATCH] Debian packaging for 0.99.4

    Debian folks on the list: We had to make this ugly hack in
    our Debianization because Debian heavyweights did not like
    to see "Conflicts:" and us lowly new maintainers needed to
    obey their wishes.

    Linus: The alleged name clash appears to be a Debian
    specific problem.  No other distribution seem to ship GNU
    interactive tools and hence have this name clash.  Debian
    folks have not even substantiated their claim that the other
    GIT is so popular that name clash with it is a bad thing.

    JC: Well, here is the popcon numbers.  I'll let people
    decide if these numbers illustrate that the other GIT is so
    popular that we cannot take over its name.

In a sense, both Linus and myself have been unfair to Debian folks on the list. Worrying about the name clash with the other GIT so much to change our name was not something they liked to do to begin with.

Yes, and that is what Linus and myself are saying. We would rather stay outside the name politics, which is internal to a particular distribution. Linus and I were trying to give ammunition for the Debian folks on the list to make an argument. Linus said that our GIT installs /usr/bin/git everywhere else without the name clash problem. I said that the other GIT does not seem to be used that much even on Debian. From these facts, they could make an argument that, if Debian as a distribution wants to stay compatible with other distributions, either (1) it should tolerate Conflict: and let us install /usr/bin/git, or (2) get the other GIT renamed. It is up to the folks pushing Debianization of our GIT to the Debian official archive which recommendation to make and deal with the Debian heavyweights.

Another thing to note is that it is not unusual for an official Debian package to have a patch to debian/* files even when the upstream sources have some such Debianization files. The Debian folks on the list could take that approach without first proposing to change the name of /usr/bin/git worldwide. I, as a Debian user [*1*], would be perfectly happy if the Debianization of our GIT did not ship "/usr/bin/git", and told the user to copy "/usr/share/doc/git-core/examples/git" to $HOME/bin/ and put $HOME/bin at the beginning of the PATH [*2*]. Maybe such a Debianization would ship with a modified tutorial that has a paragraph to remind the user about that as well.

[Footnote] *1* I do not have a single RPM machine at home nor workplace. Practically everything I touch run Debian.

*2* Even install script offering a choice to make a symlink /usr/local/bin/git pointing at /usr/bin/git-core-scm would be possible, but that would only be acceptable on a single-user machine.