Some reading material: https://wiki.debian.org/Javascript/Policy http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=614907#108
Debian (and hence other downstream distros such as Ubuntu) has decided to use /usr/bin/nodejs as the binary path for the official node.js package. Unfortunately, this makes the package unusable for applications and modules which depend on the "node" binary. For many of us who are familiar with node, it is easy to compile from source, install from a different source (such as Chris Lea's PPA), or even softlink nodejs to node to get everything working. Some people are on OSX or other distros where this problem seems nonexistent. But don't underestimate how powerful the convenience of installing from a distribution's package manager is, and how influential Debian and its downstreams are. This is a huge point of confusion for users who want to install our open source node.js apps and utilities. From their perspective, everything is just broken and they don't care enough to figure out why. "node" is an extremely generic word. Let's face it, it was a little bit arrogant to use as the binary name. It conflicts with another binary name in the debian ecosystem, and does not conflict in some other ecosystems. But such a generic word is bound to conflict in the future and be a source of confusion. "nodejs" is still concise, yet is a much less selfish citizen in the global namespace. Node has not yet reached 1.0. It's not too late to make this change. -- -- Job Board: http://jobs.nodejs.org/ Posting guidelines: https://github.com/joyent/node/wiki/Mailing-List-Posting-Guidelines You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "nodejs" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/nodejs?hl=en?hl=en --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "nodejs" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
