[GenABEL-dev] ProbABEL: Binaries without extension

[Maksim Struchalin]

Hi Lennart,

For me, it sounds reasonable to remove the file extensions.
About probabel.pl: we can provide both 'probabel.pl' and 'probabel' for 
the next few revisions (if it is possible). In this case, if users run 
'probabel.pl', we show a warning messages saying that they need to use 
'probabel' instead of 'proabbel.pl' and that 'probabel.pl' will be 
removed soon. Later, when most of users switched to 'probabel', we 
remove 'probabel.pl'.

best,
Maksim




On 11/12/2013 18:08, L.C. Karssen wrote:
> Dear list,
>
> While working on packaging ProbABEL for inclusion in Debian, I came
> across the following warning in the Debian package check (using the
> lintian program):
>
> W: probabel: script-with-language-extension usr/bin/extIDS.pl
> W: probabel: script-with-language-extension usr/bin/probabel.pl
>
> The short explanation is this:
>      When scripts are installed into a directory in the system PATH, the
>      script name should not include an extension such as .sh or .pl that
>      denotes the scripting language currently used to implement it. The
>      implementation language may change; if it does, leaving the name the
>      same would be confusing and changing it would be disruptive.
>
>
> The reasoning behind this warning is the following:
> There are several reasons for not having an extension in the name of a
> binary/script, nicely listed in this post:
>      http://lists.debian.org/debian-med/2012/04/msg00103.html
> The most important one to me is:
>      I do not see what actual information such extensions are
>      providing to the end user.  A user expects a program to do a job.
>      Fullstop.  The user does not need to care about the language a
>      program is written in if it just does what it is expected to do.
>
>
> So, for ProbABEL I propose the following:
> - extIDS.pl is not used a lot, so we can safely remove the .pl extension
> there (and update the manual, mention it in the ChangeLog and release notes)
> - For probabel.pl this is different. Many people use it exclusively
> instead of calling pa{linear,logist,coxph} directly and changing this
> would mean breaking user experience completely. I think we do need to
> remove the extension at some point in the future, but that would be in a
> 'large' update, say v0.5, not in a minor one like the upcoming v0.4.2.
>
>
> What do you think of this?
>
> Lennart.
>
>
> --
> *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
> L.C. Karssen
> Utrecht
> The Netherlands
>
> lennart at karssen.org
> http://blog.karssen.org
> GPG key ID: A88F554A
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>
>
>
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