On Thu, 8 Jun 2000, Julian Gilbey wrote: > On Thu, Jun 08, 2000 at 01:02:26PM +0200, Santiago Vila wrote: > > There are still several scripts in Debian which depend on /usr/bin/nawk. > > All of them should work with /usr/bin/awk. > > So I guess we should require them to be /usr/bin/awk.
Yes, that's the least I think we should do. > > > Is there any harm in requiring there to be a nawk -> awk symlink? > > > > That would make /usr/bin/nawk essential (because awk itself is), which > > (IMHO) would be the wrong thing to do. > > Why? Since every invocation of /usr/bin/nawk may be replaced by an equivalent invocation of /usr/bin/awk, it follows that a Debian system does not absolutely need /usr/bin/nawk to work (I mean, the same way it needs every package being Essential: yes), hence it does not make much sense to make it essential. > > The real question is: Is there any harm in requiring awk scripts to > > use /usr/bin/awk as a common interface? > > Not for Debian packages. Yes for locally installed software. Maybe, but locally installed software using /bin/perl or /usr/spool had already to be changed and nobody thought this was a good reason to keep /bin/perl or /usr/spool.
