Control: tags 923396 confirmed moreinfo Vincent Lefevre wrote...
> I get the following error:
(...)
> because testname foo does not exist. This should silently be ignored,
> so that if the testname is added in a later version, one can
> unconditionally use "file -e foo" on all machines.
>
> As an example, "file -e json" works in Debian/unstable, but not
> in stretch.
While I understand the wish to create scripts around file(1) that work
in all Debian distributions, and I'd agree probing the features of the
available file(1) version first is annoying and painful ... I am somewhat
uneasy about that particular way of solving issue: If anyone
accidentially mistypes the requested testname, file(1) will happily
continue while it certainly should break then.
Can we find another way of handling your request?
One idea was relaxing that check, but via an additional option and not
by default. Feels bad since this a permanent digression from upstream.
Another idea was using backports. They have been requested in several
places and I'm confident there will be a way to provide them on a
regular base soon.
And finally, I could hack the known testnames into old versions, making
them a no-op there. If you convince SRT to accept that, I'll be happy to
do my part.
... and I'm open for other ideas.
Cheers,
Christoph
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