On Wed, Jul 29, 2015 at 12:08 PM, Mikolaj Izdebski <mizde...@redhat.com> wrote:
> On 07/28/2015 11:37 AM, Florian Festi wrote:
>>
>> Also we still need to settle to a final syntax for the operators [1].
>> Unfortunately there is no consensus among the other packaging formats
>> what to use. Right now rpm accepts 3 different styles:
>>  * AND OR IF ELSE
>>  * & | ? :
>>  * && || ? :
>> But the final release will only support on of them. As soon as the alpha
>> stops eating babies that's a discussion we need to have.
>
> I think that C-style operators (&, &&) are better than verbose
> COBOL-style ones because they are consistent with relation operators (>,
>>= and so on) already used by rpm. Secondly, they don't introduce
> conflict with existing meaning - "Requires: foo AND bar" is valid syntax
> in rpm <= 4.12, equivalent to requiring three packages separately.
>
> From C-style operators I would prefer single-character ones for two reasons:
>
> 1) Two-character operators may suggest short-circuit evaluation -
> "Requires: foo || bar" can be misunderstood as "require foo, or bar if
> and only if foo is not available", which is not how that works. There is
> no such problem with single-character operators. In other words,
> "|" and "&" operators are commutative, but "||" and "&&" are not.
>
> 2) Debian uses single-character operators. Cross-distro consistency and
> less confusion for people working on both Fedora and Debian is a plus.

Well put, seconded.
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