Re: bug in hostname

[Alfred M. Szmidt]

   I just had a look into
   http://www.tazenda.demon.co.uk/phil/net-tools/ and they are GNU
   version 2 licensed.

You mean "GNU General Public License version 2", and what the license
is, is irrelevant to the discussion.

   > Debian GNU/Hurd uses net-tools I belive, but this conflicts with
   > inetutils.  Maybe a solution would be to move hostname into
   > inetutils, where it really belongs.  What do you think?  I'll
   > happily do the move.

   My Gentoo box uses hostname/ifconfig from net-tools. What do you
   meant "conflicts?

That you cannot install both packages because both provide the same
tools (if not all, then some of the tools).

   I don't understand why should hostname move into inetutils.

Because it is a "internet" tool.

   I don't know much about Hurd, but couldnt Hurd use hostaname from
   net-tools too?

Yes, but then you can't use inetutils.

   I thought we just don't want to build coreutils's hostname on boxes
   where /usr/bin/hostname exists already or when the version from
   net-tools is know to perform better.

Recall that coreutils doesn't only run on GNU-variants, it runs on a
wide selection of operating systems.  It would be quite possible that
these systems would end up not having hostname.  And net-tools (from
the little I know about it) only supports GNU-variant systems like
GNU/Linux and GNU/Hurd.

It seems that the maintainer of net-tools is a GNU hacker, maybe it
would be possible to merge net-tools with inetutils....

   Personally, if configure in coreutils would include a code to disable
   hostname based on certain criteria, I would be happy with that too.

That is ugly, and it is impossible to figure out what this criteria
is.

Cheers.