On Mon, 31 Jan 2022 at 10:11:19 +0000, Matthew Vernon wrote: > There are two "rename" programs, one part of upstream util-linux "rename.ul" > and one provided by the rename package "rename.pl"[0]
Almost! The one in src:rename is installed as file-rename(1p), aka prename(1p) via a symlink (you noted that this is the case on stable, but it's also the case in unstable). /usr/share/doc/rename/examples/rename.pl is just the core functionality of file-rename(1p), excluding CLI boilerplate like displaying help in order to be a better/clearer example. There's no rename.pl in PATH. Other than that, you're correct. Unfortunately, neither implementation has an upstream name other than "rename". The file-rename naming is a Debian invention, with the rationale that it comes from the File::Rename CPAN distribution (what we'd call a source package). Similarly, the rename.ul naming is a Debian invention to avoid colliding with File::Rename's rename. > For a long time, Debian's "/usr/bin/rename" has been [file-rename] (via the > alternatives system). The history here is that perl.deb used to ship rename(1) as a Debian-specific addition, based on a script eg/rename that was included in the Perl source code before 2000. https://bugs.debian.org/304705 was an earlier attempt to give users a choice between util-linux rename and Perl rename via alternatives, which is the reason the alternatives are there in the first place. However, this was a wrong use of alternatives, leading to https://bugs.debian.org/439935 and removal of the alternative. When the Perl maintainers removed its implementation of rename(1), since the alternatives were already there (left over from #304705), they used the alternatives mechanism as a way to transition to the separate implementation in src:rename. Requests to ship util-linux rename(1) go back as far as at least 2004 (https://bugs.debian.org/228737). > Assuming that's all correct, my feeling is that there is no particular > reason for Debian's rename to stop being [file-rename], but that we should > make rename.ul available to users who want it. I think the maintainer would > be happy to move rename.ul into bsdextrautils (as /usr/bin/rename.ul)? Taking > it out of essential, not considering it an alternative to [file-rename], and > keeping it available for people who want it. If the util-linux maintainer is OK with that, then I think that's probably going to be the least-bad solution. It's unfortunate that Debian and other distros have settled on incompatible rename implementations, but it has happened, and now neither group of distributions can be compatible with the other one without breaking compatibility with older versions of itself. smcv
