On Sat, 26 Aug 2006, Andreas J. Guelzow wrote: > To drop the > order bind, hosts > line from /etc/host.conf is very ill advised. > > It just took me a large number of hours to track the problem that an > essential (for us) software package stopped working thanks for this > unnecessary bug fix. I call it unnecessary since that line is simply > not used in recent versions of glibc. > > This program that failed for us is Mathematica version 4.0. This is a > statically linked program that uses the order line of /etc/host.conf. > (While some in our department have migrated to maxima, several members > are still using Mathematica, and failure to have this run correctly is a > major problem!) > > Please don't drop such items with out regard to older pieces of > software!
The reason to remove the line is not that it's no longer used, the reason is that it's *misleading*. Now you have a point, "some" software may break because of this, but so far the only example happens to be jurassic statically linked software which is also non-free and proprietary (and of course Debian does not distribute). I don't feel a lot sorry for this. I think this is the kind of problem we should better document, instead of perpetuating the misleading line. May I suggest that you report this against the release notes document for etch? -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
