Re: bug in hostname

[Paul Jarc]

"Alfred M. Szmidt" <address@hidden> wrote:
>    I don't understand why should hostname move into inetutils.
>
> Because it is a "internet" tool.

Well, it has sort of become one.  But Unix has had hostname longer
than it has had networks, IIRC, and hostname does not do any network
communication itself.  I think coreutils is a fine place for hostname,
but inetutils would be ok too.

> 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.

That doesn't seem very likely to me, but along the same lines, even
though the system may already have one version of the command
installed, people often install the GNU version because they like it
better.  Deciding which version should appear first in $PATH is a
choice made by distributors, admins, and users, not the maintainers of
the commands.

>    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.

There is precedent for a ./configure option like --disable-hostname; I
think that's the sort of thing Martin was talking about.

But the best proposal I've heard so far is to merge the version from
gettext into coreutils.  That version supports all the options people
have asked for, and its copyright is already assigned to the FSF.


paul