Date: Sun, 16 Mar 2008 18:10:51 +1100 From: Peter Jeremy <peterjeremy@optushome.com.au> To: Bert JW Regeer <xistence@0x58.com> Cc: FreeBSD Hackers <freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: OpenBSD sdiff Question Message-ID: <20080316071050.GA44676@server.vk2pj.dyndns.org> In-Reply-To: <432044E0-812E-4C13-A62D-EEA7170DADB9@0x58.com> References: <20080314231404.GB99765@scruffy.exit2shell.com> <20080315135916.GH68662@dracon.ht-systems.ru> <432044E0-812E-4C13-A62D-EEA7170DADB9@0x58.com>
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--ReaqsoxgOBHFXBhH Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On Sat, Mar 15, 2008 at 03:21:01PM -0700, Bert JW Regeer wrote: >Even if BSD has no tradition to keep a separate program version, it is=20 >still very handy to be able to give this data to other developers if=20 >something is failing. Programs that don't have a -v or --version switch ar= e=20 >frustrating to people who are trying to find a workaround for a bug that i= s=20 >in that program, or when looking at documentation online, when the=20 >documentation is for one version and not for a newer version. This demonstrates the difference between the BSD approach of having a complete, integrated operating system, and the GNU/Linux approach of having a variety of packages, each of different versions, which were riginally intended to supplant the vendor-provided versions of those utilities. A single string like "sdiff (GNU diffutils) 2.8.7" can only report that the sdiff you are using is part of GNU diffutils version 2.8.7. It is not particularly useful for reporting a failure because that failure is equally likely to be in (eg) glibc (the version of which is not reported). For a FreeBSD tool, the closest thing to a simple version number would be __FreeBSD_version. >Dropping -v would be a bad thing, and make the tools not compatible, thus= =20 >breaking many scripts that do expect a -v. The only sensible reason for a script to invoke a tool with '-v' would be to try and determine whether that tool has some feature/defect that the script needs to know about. In this case, the reported version number needs to be both in a format that the script can parse and have values that the script recognizes. If a script expects to see: >> $ sdiff -v >> sdiff (GNU diffutils) 2.8.7 >> Written by Thomas Lord. >> >> Copyright (C) 2004 Free Software Foundation, Inc. >> This is free software; see the source for copying conditions. There is = NO >> warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPO= SE. Then it is likely to choke on (eg) $ sdiff -v sdiff (FreeBSD) 700055 --=20 Peter Jeremy Please excuse any delays as the result of my ISP's inability to implement an MTA that is either RFC2821-compliant or matches their claimed behaviour. --ReaqsoxgOBHFXBhH Content-Type: application/pgp-signature Content-Disposition: inline -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.8 (FreeBSD) iEYEARECAAYFAkfcx/oACgkQ/opHv/APuIce6ACffXXCJoQDi/qsjoBhI+dC5URU XJEAnRNwLdHcUwqaOqtFlCvlDc3gQ6en =bhYP -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --ReaqsoxgOBHFXBhH--
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