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From: terry@cs.weber.edu (A Wizard of Earth C)
Subject: Re: PLEA across the board.
Message-ID: <1993Apr21.200507.7489@fcom.cc.utah.edu>
Keywords: version information
Sender: news@fcom.cc.utah.edu
Organization: Weber State University (Ogden, UT)
References: <jmonroyC5rz7x.LA1@netcom.com>
Date: Wed, 21 Apr 93 20:05:07 GMT
Lines: 53
In article <jmonroyC5rz7x.LA1@netcom.com> jmonroy@netcom.com (Jesus Monroy Jr) writes:
>
> A Plea follows to 386BSD developers
> -----------------------------------
>
> The following two message came from the LINUX group.
>
> I am making the same call to 386BSD developers.
>
>
>==========================================================================
>From: jhenders@wimsey.bc.ca (John Henders)
>Subject: Plea to linux developers!
>Organization: Wimsey Information Services
>Date: Sat, 17 Apr 1993 20:07:10 GMT
>
>
> After several frustraiong experiences with linux software, I'd
>like to propose that all linux authors and porters try to put a version
>number in their binaries that can be called with -v, -V, -h or -?. It
>would be to everyone's benifit if there was an easy way to find out what
>version of a package, instead of sometimes having to go by the file date
>or what directory on what archive site it was on.
> What do people think?
To answer the question instead of the plea:
The only viable option (not taken already by some command, thus causing an
incompatability with Posix, existing shell scripts, etc.) is the "-?". This
has the unfortunate characteristic of being a globbing character in many
popular shells (which probably explains why it isn't taken).
Take a look at 1003.2. I think the loss of standards compliance and of
backward compatability with existing code is too high a price to pay for
people who probably are going to guess "/h" or "/help" anyway. To assume
they know the UNIX options delimiters is as large an assumption asexpecting
them to know about "man".
If typing "man" is "too cryptic", ln it to "help" on your system; if using
"man" is too cryptic, archie for "help"... there are many excellent packages.
To exaggerate a [very] little, every third Senior project is a help system.
Terry Lambert
terry@icarus.weber.edu
---
Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present
or previous employers.
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