[GenABEL-dev] ProbABEL: Binaries without extension

[L.C. Karssen]

Dear Maksim,

On 11-12-13 13:22, Maksim Struchalin wrote:
> 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). 

Good suggestion. That should be 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. 

Also a good point! I think it would be easy to implement such a warning
and it will help getting the users adapted to the change.


Thanks,

Lennart.

> 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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-- 
*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
L.C. Karssen
Utrecht
The Netherlands

lennart at karssen.org
http://blog.karssen.org
GPG key ID: A88F554A
-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-

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