Hello,
Debian provides two parallel executable one from the parallel package
(gnu parallel) and one from the moreutils package.
When both packages are installed, /usr/bin/parallel is gnu parallel, and
/usr/bin/parallel.moreutils is parallel from the moreutils package
If only moreutils has been installed, then /usr/bin/parallel is parallel
from the moreutils package, and /usr/bin/parallel.moreutils is not
available.
This makes scripts depending on parallel or parallel.moreutils more
brittle and error-prone between Debian installations then they need to be.
I could not find any information if something like the following has
already been proposed (and eventually rejected):
moreutils should also provide /usr/bin/parallel.moreutils, even if gnu
parallel is not installed(!)
gnu parallel should also provide /usr/bin/parallel.gnu
Those two changes would make it easier to avoid using the wrong parallel
program by accident, and easier to use the right parallel program
explicitly.
If a program, for example, depends on parallel from moreutils, it needs
to check if parallel.moreutils is available, if not verify if parallel
is available and if it is, determine if it the gnu or moreutils version.
With the proposed change, it would suffice to use parallel.moreutils
directly.
