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Re: GNU Fileutils and GNU/Hurd extentions.


From: Alfred M. Szmidt
Subject: Re: GNU Fileutils and GNU/Hurd extentions.
Date: Thu, 21 Mar 2002 14:41:09 +0100
User-agent: Gnus/5.090004 (Oort Gnus v0.04) Emacs/21.2.50

* Paul Eggert writes:
>> From: address@hidden (Alfred M. Szmidt) Date: Sun, 17 Mar 2002
>> 19:16:26 +0100
>> 
>> I sort of dislike having an macro for each feature, it would result
>> in a lot of them (unknown user bits, translators, author field,
>> etc). But I suppose that I could live with this, if any system ever
>> adds these options they will work without any weird changes.

> If some of the features are a logical unit, you can test for one
> feature and assume that the others are present if it is.
What about using HOST_OPERATING_SYSTEM for the time being?
Just check if HOST_OPERATING_SYSTEM equals GNU and be done with it.
Or just define something like HAVE_GNU_EXTENTIONS right after the case
statement for GNU in aclocal.m4 (UTILS_HOST_OS).

And if at some later point other systems start supporting any of these
extensions one can change them accordingly.

>> I have mixed feelings about this because this is very useful
>> information for the user, and any program that actually parses the
>> output of ls is broken IMHO.

> There are a lot of broken programs, then.  GNU Emacs is one of them,
> for example: its dired mode parses 'ls' output.
And these programs should be fixed.

> Also, I worry that the resulting 'ls' output would be wider than 80
> columns too often.
The output of `ls -l' is almost always wider than 80 columns anyway.
We are talking about the long listing format and not a plain `ls' right?

> I think it'd be OK to muck with "dir" and "vdir", though.  People
> could get the behavior that you want with "vdir" or "dir -l", say.
Don't think I have ever used those commands.

>> Would it be OK to use one switch for the showing the unknown bits
>> and translator information (--gnu, I know it's a bad name) or
>> should one use two switches
>> (--show-translators/--show-unknown-user-bits)?

> I think one switch would be OK, at least at first.  You might want
> to call it --hurd-extensions, perhaps?
I prefer --gnu-extensions over --hurd-extensions.

-- 
Alfred M. Szmidt



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