Subject: bug#18648: rm -f with no file operands fails on old BSD systems

From: Stefano Lattarini <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 17 Dec 2014 11:34:16 +0100

tags 18648 + wontfix
stop

On 10/07/2014 05:00 AM, Philip Guenther wrote:
> On Mon, Oct 6, 2014 at 7:51 PM, Richard Hansen <[email-masked]> wrote:
> ...
>> Digging around in various CVS/Subversion repositories, it looks like
>> there are many old (but perhaps not yet museum-worthy) *BSD versions
>> that behave this way:
>>
>>    * NetBSD 4.x and older (5.0 released April 2009).  see: [1] [2]
>>    * FreeBSD 3.1.x and older (3.2 released May 1999).  see: [3] [4]
>>    * OpenBSD 2.x and older (3.0 released Dec 2001).  see [5]
>
> Speaking on behalf of the OpenBSD project: OpenBSD 2.x should be
> considered dead, buried, rotted, and worthy of derision.  History is
> history: useful to study, but if you try to live there you will die of
> horrific diseases.  Do not hold up progress on the basis that you'll
> trip over a 12+ year old release.
>
> Philip Guenther
> [email-masked]
>

I belatedly agree with Philip.  Even the last "free" BSD release to be
affected (NetBSD 4.0) is 5 and a half years old, and in the fast-moving
scenario of today's computing that sounds like a different geological
era, IMHO. We should not allow the habits the autotools community had
to develop "under duress" during the Unix wars period to affect today's
progress.