[145] in athena10
Re: The default prompt
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Timothy G Abbott)
Sat Mar 29 14:50:06 2008
Date: Sat, 29 Mar 2008 14:49:14 -0400 (EDT)
From: Timothy G Abbott <tabbott@MIT.EDU>
To: Quentin Smith <quentin@mit.edu>
cc: Jonathan Reed <jdreed@mit.edu>, linerva@mit.edu, debathena@mit.edu,
athena10@mit.edu
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.64L.0803291352400.16263@vinegar-pot.mit.edu>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.64L.0803291404490.12201@vinegar-pot.mit.edu>
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On Sat, 29 Mar 2008, Quentin Smith wrote:
> Even if the current setting has negative utility in some cases, we need to
> keep in mind that changes to existing defaults also have a negative utility
> for users. I know that I personally like having CDPATH set, and even set
> CDPATH myself on non-Athena machines. I think it's disingenuous to say "oh, I
> don't use this feature, we shouldn't have it on by default" when other users
> are used to having it set.
The argument for removing CDPATH from the defaults is not that 'nobody
uses it', but rather that many users are frequently bitten by it because
they are unaware the feature exists and is turned on.
Many people who I have explained that I was considering stopping setting
CDPATH in the system dotfiles responded that they were annoyed for years
by randomly cd'ing to a subdirectory of $HOME and had never figured out
why it happened to them on Athena until I mentioned we were considering
disabling it.
The Athena default dotfiles should differ from the distribution standard
dotfiles only in way that are either essentially universally desireable
(as it seems "set interactive" is in tcsh) or that are specific to the
Athena environment (e.g. the renew function). Random other customizations
such as setting CDPATH to include your home directory should be avoided,
especially given that CDPATH is so unpopular.
-Tim Abbott
