[174] in athena10
Re: System Dotfiles (was Re: /svn/athena r22913
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Jonathan Reed)
Tue Apr 22 23:15:08 2008
Cc: Greg Hudson <ghudson@mit.edu>, athena10@mit.edu
Message-Id: <CE7D6005-36A6-4C0C-A5DC-1D020FEFEE5A@mit.edu>
From: Jonathan Reed <jdreed@MIT.EDU>
To: Timothy G Abbott <tabbott@mit.edu>
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.64L.0804221932280.23969@vinegar-pot.mit.edu>
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Date: Tue, 22 Apr 2008 23:14:15 -0400
> - Whether we want to set the noclobber option. I think we don't.
It's helpful, particularly for files with a longevity less than that
which is required to show up in OldFiles. People who care can use >!
to override it.
> - Whether we want to set IGNOREEOF (this is important if people are
> using zwrite on the command line a lot, but I don't see that much
> these days). I currently favor no.
I like having this set. I'm sure I'm not the only person who has
accidentally pressed Ctrl-D in the wrong xterm before. Putting people
in the mindset of explicitly logging out is also a good thing, IMHO.
> - Whether we want to keep the bit of code that resets HOME (this
> seems to go awry sometimes). I think we should do tests and make a
> decision.
I'm confused as to which bit of code we're talking about.
> - Whether we're intending to switch the default shell away from
> tcsh. I think we should.
Ugh. Are there any compelling non-religious reasons for doing this?
I understand the desire to move away from building our own tcsh, but
surely Ubuntu provides a working tcsh. tcsh has been the default
since ~forever, and tons of example code and dotfiles make this
assumption. For example, this will break things like "setup", which
does not yet exist in bash. There's a lot of third party software and
course lockers that rely on "setup", and changing those would require
a lot of outreach. If we want to debate the merits of one shell over
another, that's fine, but I think this is the wrong forum, and I think
such a change is completely outside the scope of the project. Unless
you're talking about switching the default shell only for accounts
created after a certain date, and that would suck from a support
standpoint.
I think we need to seriously consider who will benefit from these
changes, and why we might want to make them. Someone who uses their
UNIX box every hour of every day would find noclobber and ignoreeof
annoying, I'm sure. However, for a novice or occasional user, they
can be quite friendly options.
$0.02
-Jon
