On Fri, May 03, 2002 at 02:02:38PM -0500, Manoj Srivastava wrote: > >>"Anthony" == Anthony Towns <aj@azure.humbug.org.au> writes: > Anthony> On Thu, May 02, 2002 at 03:31:18PM -0500, Manoj Srivastava wrote: > >> > "Hey why doesn't cardinfo work?" > >> > "It's an X program and you don't have X installed." > >> In this particular case, you got me. In the general case, > >> though, I still think my arguments have merit. > > Right, but that's kind-of the point: in the general case this isn't an > > issue, since everyone recognises it's a bad thing to do and there're > > very few cases where fixing it would actually be worse. > A clarification: On reflection, I think you got me on that > example, not on my general arguments. Having a program fail with a > linkage error is certainly a bug.
Sure. I'm not trying to argue a general case here. I don't think cardinfo or apt-preconfigure do generalise. There might be more instances that should end up with a similar result for completely different reasons, but I wouldn't expect there'd be many. > Another interesting case is bsdmainutils: it contains > calendar, and suggests cpp, but calendar does not work unless cpp is > installed. > Do people think that is OK? Depends what the alternatives are and how much they'd suck. Cheers, aj -- Anthony Towns <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> <http://azure.humbug.org.au/~aj/> I don't speak for anyone save myself. GPG signed mail preferred. ``BAM! Science triumphs again!'' -- http://www.angryflower.com/vegeta.gif -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
