Hi Marc, Quoting Marc Haber (2025-04-28 08:39:17) > On Sun, 27 Apr 2025 15:08:18 +0200, "Andrea Pappacoda" > <and...@pappacoda.it> wrote: > >On Sun Apr 27, 2025 at 2:18 PM CEST, Marc Haber wrote: > >> Useradd has grown most of that functionality in the last two decades. > >> That leaves no space for adduser between useradd and sysusers. At > >> least not enouch space to waste any more life time on it. > > > >I think I do not fully understand what you mean: are you saying that > >adduser is useless outside of maintainer scripts? > > I am saying that adduser was written in a time when useradd had about > a fifth of its current features, and that the local admin can use > useradd to create local users as comfortably nowadays, and be portable > between distributions. adduser has developed into a helper for > maintainer scripts, and I was told a few weeks ago that the months of my life > I spent improving adduser are going down the drain.
I don't think that's true. Even if maintainer scripts are moving away from adduser, maybe think about it this way: - adduser has served many thousands of users for two decades directly as well as indirectly via maintainer scripts or any program which relies on adduser. All of these thousands of people would not've been able to do what they did in these many years if you had not maintained adduser. Thousands of people should be grateful of your work (and so am I) for what adduser has done for them in the past. This is a fact and independent from wherever adduser is going in the future. Your life time was far from wasted I think. - useradd gained the features it did because adduser paved the way for them. Your software was and is part of a wider ecosystem and you inspired other software authors to improve their software. You are one of the giants that others are standing on top of when they wrote their software. This is also something that nobody can take away from you and which is independent of wherever adduser is going in the future. I understand that it feels very good to be the author/maintainer of a popular piece of software. I like the feeling I get when the popcon graph of my own packages is going up. We can also be upset about our own mortality and just as we will not be here one day anymore: what we did in our life will always be part of what the world is like today. Maybe you can think about it that way. Your software has been the cornerstone of the computing use for many, many, many people throughout the years. Nobody can take that away from you. I think you can be very proud. :) Thank you! cheers, josch
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