Re: [ITP] moreutils 0.61

[Adam Dinwoodie <adam@dinwoodie.org>]

On Wednesday 15 November 2017 at 08:52 pm +0000, Tony Kelman wrote:
> >> >> -   parallel: run multiple jobs at once
> >>
> >> I'd be hesitatnt to package that since it directly clashes with GNU
> >> parallel (not available on Cygwin yet).
> >
> > Hmm.  I wasn't aware of GNU parallel, and I'm not sure how that sort of
> > problem is generally handled.  Possibly that could be broken out into a
> > separate package to make it easier for folk to install one or the other?
> > I considered and decided against breaking the entire lot into separate
> > packages, but this is perhaps a good argument for at least separating
> > that.
> 
> This has been a long source of tension between moreutils' author and the
> debian packager (probably fedora and other distros too). I don't know off
> the top of my head what solution those distros have come up with for the
> name conflict but they may be doing something worth investigating and
> imitating.
> 
> I have made frequent use of mispipe and ts, and would probably use other
> pieces of moreutils if I remembered them better, so I'd use and appreciate
> a cygwin package of them - assuming a solution is found to the potential
> name conflict.

It looks like both OS X's Homebrew and Debian's Apt deal with this by
just having the packages conflict.  Homebrew definitely warns about the
conflicts, when it sees you trying to install both packages, and I would
assume Apt does too.

I'm guessing setup-*.exe doesn't have the ability to detect and handle
this sort of conflict, but I can see a bunch of alternative options:

-   Do nothing for now and deal with the problem as and when someone
    ITPs GNU parallel.

-   Add detection for this sort of conflict somehow, and refuse to allow
    users to install conflicting packages.

-   Document the conflict in release announcements but otherwise do
    nothing, and allow the packages to overwrite each other if both are
    installed.

-   Rename moreutils parallel (e.g. `mparallel`) so it doesn't conflict.

-   As and when GNU parallel is packaged, rename it (e.g. `gparallel`)
    so it doesn't conflict.

-   Just refuse to package one or the other for Cygwin.

I'm leaning towards either doing nothing and leaving it as a problem for
the future, or renaming moreutils parallel now, but I'd be very
interested in the list's opinion.