Package: findutils
Version: 4.6.0+git+20161106-2
Followup-For: Bug #725392
Control: retitle -1 findutils: please add xargs -o parameter (MirBSD
compatible) to help interactive applications
Control: tags -1 + upstream
Hi,
maybe a slightly better formatted wishlist report helps.
The manual page of GNU xargs mentions this:
xargs sh -c 'emacs "$@" < /dev/tty' emacs
Launches the minimum number of copies of Emacs needed, one after the
other, to edit the files listed on xargs' standard input. This example
achieves the same effect as BSD's -o option, but in a more flexible and
portable way.
BSD’s ‘-o’ option is documented thus:
-o Reopen stdin as /dev/tty in the child process before executing
the command. This is useful if you want xargs to run an interac-
tive application.
IMHO, the -o option is much less cumbersome to type/remember, and for
the sake of reverse portability (support applications that _already_
use the BSD variant), and especially given that the GNU maintainers
already know of it, the -o option ought to be added to GNU xargs as
well.
Side effect: avoids launching another shell, and, more importantly
to some, avoids quoting hell.
(That being said, /bin/sh on FreeBSD and derivates thereof has
slightly broken (for hysterical raisins) behaviour when sh -c cmd
is followed by “--” so the portability the GNU maintainers assert
for the sh variant is not exactly true either.)
So please persuade the upstream developers to add it; if necessary
I can likely cook up a debdiff.
-- System Information:
Debian Release: 9.0
APT prefers unstable
APT policy: (500, 'unstable')
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Kernel: Linux 4.9.0-3-686-pae (SMP w/2 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=C, LC_CTYPE=en_GB.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8), LANGUAGE=C (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/lksh
Init: sysvinit (via /sbin/init)
Versions of packages findutils depends on:
ii libc6 2.24-11
ii libselinux1 2.6-3+b1
findutils recommends no packages.
Versions of packages findutils suggests:
ii mlocate 0.26-2
-- no debconf information
