Re: [PATCH] adding two new options to 'cp'

On 07/31/06 09:11, Mike Meyer wrote:
In <44CE03D2.2050803@xxxxxxxxxxxx>, Eric Anderson <anderson@xxxxxxxxxxxx> typed:
The patch doesn't change any current behavior, nor should it be noticed by anyone not looking for it. However, it is useful, and it does make our cp work just like the GNU cp, which eases the migration path for linux->FreeBSD users.

Is emulating Linux behavior that good an idea? I mean, if I want
Linux, I can download and install a copy. The joke about "Linux is for
people who hate Windows; FreeBSD is for people who love Unix" is funny
to me *because* it seems to capture the difference between the two
systems so accurately. I like Unix/BSD because I feel like the
developers respect the user, and are willing to let the user do pretty
much anything they need to do, even if there's no obvious reason for
them to want that. I detest Windows because the developers treat the
the user like an idiot, and write software that does things the way
they think the user should want to do them - and make it impossible to
do things that the developers don't think users would ever need/want
to do. Linux seems to have more of the latter attitude than the
former. [And no, I don't think this patch has that attitude; I just
don't think that "that's how linux does it" is a valid argument:
freebsd isn't linux.]

The -a option that was included in my patch was certainly added for compatibility sake and ease of use. I added it in while I was there to make our cp work with that same shortcut as Linux, not because I love linux (which I'm not that fond of), but because I would use it, and it would be helpful.

The -l option was a missing feature, and is what gave me the desire to even look at the code. I obviously wouldn't have spent any time on it if I didn't need it bad enough, and I know of other users that work their way around it by using pipes and cpio, or pax, etc, along with hacking the code that uses those tools to change it from a cp command to their concocted version, but that isn't always an option.

The reasoning was not simply to make it like linux, that's just a side effect.

I suppose I'm just missing the reason *not* to commit such a simple and useful set of options.

Feature bloat. Or, more verbosely, this doesn't add any new
functionality to the system, while adding things that we would rather
minimize.

This is a really funny reason not to. Honestly, if you believe that, that you probably don't use cp at all, since dd can do it. In fact, I bet you don't use sysinstall either, right? I hate to be like this, but this is really kind of goofy sounding, as *tons* of tools in FreeBSD are there to make life easier, administration faster, etc. I mean, you use emacs right? Why not just echo the data to the mailer?

If the functionality is all that useful, then people should have
already created shell code to make this functionality easily available
via the tools that already have it. If nobody needs this functionality
often enough to have done that, is it something that we want to
enshrine in compiled code?

To me, I read this as saying: "If it was useful, it would have already been done, and since it isn't, it must not be needed by anyone."

Eric





--
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Eric Anderson Sr. Systems Administrator Centaur Technology
Anything that works is better than anything that doesn't.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
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