Subject: bug#23090: true and false not POSIX

From: Eric Blake <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 22 Mar 2016 12:56:58 -0600

On 03/22/2016 12:35 PM, Ruediger Meier wrote:

>>> I suggest an enhancement for portability and implementation
>>> simplicity to remove the options --version and --help from true,
>>> false echo and [.
>>
>> Sorry, but that would violate GNU Coding Standards, so we aren't
>> going to do it.
> 
> So then test --help is a coreutils bug because it does not respect GNU 
> Coding Standard? As already said the exit codes are for sure not 
> GNU-style too.

No, 'test --help' is a special case where we follow the POSIX rules
always, because we have '[ --help' in its place for when we want to
expose the GNU capabilities of the same .c file.

> 
> What about changing GNU Coding Standards to allow to break them if they 
> don't make any sense like in this case?

You're welcome to propose a change to the standards; but they are not
maintained on this list; see [email-masked]  If you get that
change approved by rms, then we'll adjust coreutils to match.  But rms
will probably ask for the coreutils' maintainers' opinion before
approving such a change, so it will be an uphill battle on your side.

-- 
Eric Blake   eblake redhat com    +1-919-301-3266
Libvirt virtualization library http://libvirt.org