On Fri, Sep 24, 2021 at 03:00:59PM -0700, Sean Whitton wrote: > I thought what you wanted was to drop cjwatson-which, either in favour > of no which in Debian at all, or the option to install GNU or BSD which. > > However, you have now suggested that someone could package > cjwatson-which in another package. But in that case, what do you see > removing cjwatson-which from debianutils as achieving?
I am merely pointing out that the current situation allows for an infinite number of people to package an infinite number of `which` alternatives, and no one has to get my permission or coordinate with me. Adrian has suggested that cjwatson-which is superior to any currently proposed alternatives because of its file size. I could not care less which `which` alternatives people want to maintain because I have no use for /usr/bin/which. Picture the happy path: GNU which successfully passes through NEW. A dozen people form a team to package FreeBSD which, which also makes it through NEW. bookworm is released, and debianutils drops cjwatson-which. * Anyone who wants GNU which can install and use GNU which * Anyone who wants FreeBSD which can install and use FreeBSD which * `which` is no longer Essential, so people like me who don't want /usr/bin/which on their systems can have that too, because surely no one competent would choose to have a package depend on `which` when a standard POSIX utility can do a better job * The people who care not a whit about `which` no longer see that annoying deprecation warning being spewed by random scripts * All `which` alternatives in Debian will (probably) be maintained upstream, and also maintained downstream by people that care about `which` * debianutils gets closer to achieving its mission, by having one fewer irrelevant utility that does not belong In this scenario, the GNU which enthusiasts are happy, the FreeBSD which enthusiasts are happy, I am happy, and presumably Adrian is unhappy. So, then, what is the magic solution that will make all four groups happy?
