[tex-live] gellmu executable name conflicts?

Patrice Dumas pertusus at free.fr
Sun Feb 10 11:02:27 CET 2008


On Sat, Feb 09, 2008 at 06:41:14PM -0600, Karl Berry wrote:
> The author of Gellmu (http://www.albany.edu/~hammond/gellmu/) and I are
> contemplating putting gellmu in TeX Live.  As things stand, this would
> mean several new executables (all scripts), with rather cryptic names:
> 
> lg2h
> lg2s
> lg2x
> mmkg
> umkg
> mmkg-choose
> lmkg
> mmkgfroms
> mmkgfromx
> xg2pl
> mkg
> 
> I'm not sure yet if all of these are completely required, but I want to
> get the scoop: are there other programs by these names in existence?
> Can you distro guys check, please, and let me know?
> (Or if any other problems with the above.)

Indeed these names are much too generic and too short. If it is possible
to change with something more meaningfull (especially those with 4
letters and less), it would be very nice. When I review a package for
inclusion in fedora and I see such names in a shared namespace (in
bindor, include directory or file, library name, package names), I
refuse to accept it. Other reviewers may disagree and let it pass
the review, but I think it is bad. I think we should care with existing
but also future conflicts and teach upstream to choose meaningful names.
I've been personnally bitten by these issues with tex4ht, though now
it is fixed.

--
Pat


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