Re: Survey: renaming/removing script binaries (createdb, createuser...)

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> Yes, I understand your point of view, but on other side there
> are arguments in discussion, that for newbies old name are
> terrible to use and frankly, who reads manual before he start
> to use a product?

This is a terrible argument.

> Nobody want to rename psql. Personaly, I dislike current command
> names for long long time. Many times I tried create unix user by
> createuser command. And these names could be potential names of
> system commands.

Yours is the first time I've heard of anyone with this problem.
The useradd and adduser commands don't even start with the same
letter. If it's that confusing, you can always use an alias or a
symlink to make things more inline with what you want.

For the record, I think any renaming is a terrible idea, and a solution
in search of a problem. Any change, no matter how long it takes, will
break untold number of scripts, make us look bad, and frustrate
people, similar to the way that implicit cast removal did in 8.3, but
without the Very Good Reason to show people why we made the change.

Additionally, once we make the change, to which version do we refer to
in the docs or when answering questions? You can't safely refer to
the new commands until they've had time to percolate through as people
update their database. And considering that I still work with some 7.3
system, and plenty of 7.4 ones, that could be a long time.

*If* we're going to do this, at the very least it needs to be rolled
out as a point revision update across all versions, so we minimize the
confusion for people on older versions. We also need to keep symlinks
or some other backwards-compatibilty around for a long time, *and* make
a clean break at some future major version with lots of prior warning.

- --
Greg Sabino Mullane greg(at)turnstep(dot)com
PGP Key: 0x14964AC8 200803271839
http://biglumber.com/x/web?pk=2529DF6AB8F79407E94445B4BC9B906714964AC8
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