[Pkg-javascript-devel] whether or not to sometimes remove questionably useful binaries from node modules

[Jérémy Lal]

Le lundi 30 juin 2014 à 18:59 -0700, Andrew Kelley a écrit :
> from #debian-multimedia
> 
> <fsateler> andrewrk: why did you remove the ncp binary?
> <andrewrk> fsateler, it clutters up the global bin namespace, and why would
> you ever use it instead of plain old cp ?

it doesn't clutter the namespace, unless the name is already taken (or
is too generic).
No package provides bin|sbin/ncp, and ncp isn't generic (?).
Is it useful in any way ? For example, 'rimraf' provides a binary for
recursively removing files, like 'rm -rf'. I noticed that when deleting
thousands of files rimraf is a lot faster... so deciding to not install
it is not as obvious as it looks.


> <andrewrk> it seems common for node module authors to include useless
> binaries with their libraries
> <andrewrk> another one: https://github.com/rvagg/node-errno
> <andrewrk> in the common use case, all node modules are installed locally
> to the project. so people are not worried about picking globally unique
> binary names. in the above project if you were using it you could do
> something like:
> <andrewrk> ./node_modules/.bin/errno foo
> <andrewrk> while developing. but as node-errno debian package I think it
> makes sense to only include the library functionality
> <andrewrk> I suppose Jérémy Lal would have an opinion on this
> 
> Any other opinions out there?

here the binary 'errno' is some kind of 'lintian-info' for nodejs/libuv
error numbers.
Users might expect that binary to be available when installing it (it
provides a quick way to find documentation).
But in this case, 'errno' is dangerously close to have a 'too generic
name' . The name might better be 'errnojs', using the same prefix so
users can find it easily.

Jérémy.