[ANNOUNCEMENT] Test: grep 3.8 - promotion to current stable

[Thomas Wolff]

Am 04.11.2022 um 20:27 schrieb Corinna Vinschen:
> On Nov  4 13:07, Brian Inglis wrote:
>> On Thu, 03 Nov 2022 19:31:27 +0100, Achim Gratz wrote:
>>> Brian Inglis writes:
>>>> Suggest that I could come up with a package grep-nowarn which can only
>>>> suppress the [ef]grep warnings, where the package would install
>>>> [ef]grep-nowarn, and the postinstall script could rename the
>>>> distributed shell scripts to [ef]grep-warn, and install alternatives
>>>> with -warn priority 10, -nowarn priority 20; preremove would reverse
>>>> the process.
>>>>
>>>> Suggestions to accommodate -nowarn from grep package postinstall?
>>>> I could supply the same postinstall and preremove as -nowarn to check
>>>> for -nowarn and install or uninstall the alternative.
>>>>
>>>> Sequence or timing issues to watch out for during postinstall/preremove?
>>> As Corinna already said, why GNU suddenly cares so much about strict
>>> POSIX conformance in this case is puzzling.  If anything they should
>>> have left the decision to packagers and IMNHO the warning should only be
>>> presented when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set in the environment, if at all.
>>> The patch to the wrapper script(s) in question is trivial and several
>>> Linux distributions have removed the warning already (if you do this,
>>> also change the interpreter from bash to dash).  Just skip any
>>> extra packages and do the same.
>> The issue does not appear to be about POSIX compliance, but that [ef]grep
>> were dropped from POSIX before 2008 and declared obsolescent, so the
>> maintainers appear to be looking to drop those commands/scripts.
> This is a usability issue.  If upstream thinks they have to do such a
> potentially destructive and backward-incompatible change for no other
> reason than "is not in POSIX", they can do so, but there's no good
> reason the distros who *care* for usability have to do this either.
>
>> You could perhaps reach out to Eric Blake or Jim Meyering who are in the GNU
>> grep contributor lists for rationale.
>>
>> While Debian and OpenSuSE have reverted that change, Fedora has not in main
>> or rawhide.
> Right, Debian and OpenSuSE revert the change and the BSDs will not break
> e/fgrep either, obviously.  I doubt Ubuntu will do that.  Fedora often
> values progress, for a given value of "progress", higher than usability.
> They will probably see lots of Bugzillas and user requests in other
> forums due to this change and then ignore them.  But that doesn't mean
> we have to do it.
>
> Again: Egrep and fgrep are used in lots of scripts around the world.  A
> change like this will have a massive impact for years to come.
>
> So, again, in the name of usability, let's follow Debian and OpenSuSE
> here, not Fedora, please.
@Brian, as a grep package maintainer, can you *please* make a trivial 
patch to remove the grep crap as Corinna suggested and upload an updated 
package *today*, as Jon Turney threatens to freeze the x86 repository 
tomorrow?