Re: Lua Distributions and Package Management

[Sean Conner <sean@...>]

It was thus said that the Great Ross Berteig once stated:
> On 9/28/2013 3:47 PM, Sean Conner wrote:
> >....
> >   2. I was unaware that $HOME/bin was a common Unix idiom.  And why are 
> >   you
> >checking for $HOME/bin (or /usr/local/bin)?
> 
> Including $HOME/bin is (or was in the early 1980s) a common idiom among 
> Unix users. Where else would you put your personally written scripts and 
> programs on a timesharing system? Only the sysadmin had write access to 
> /usr/local, which itself was not necessarily present on early BSD and 
> System 3 Unix systems that I personally remember coming in contact with.
> 
> I remain surprised that convention does seem to have fallen into disuse 
> in Linux distributions. 

  It doesn't surprise me.  Yes, I started out on true multi-user Unix
systems in the very late 80s, but by the mid-90s, the concept of a
"multi-user" system was, for all intended purposes, dead.  Heck, right now
I'm sitting at home using three Unix based computers (Linux, Mac-OS X,
iPhone).  The concept of multiple people using the same computer at the same
time is anachronistic. [1]

> I guess it is no longer the case that a typical user actually writes any
> scripts or programs of their own (as distinct from installing things
> distributed as source), or if they do, they habitually use sudo to copy
> them to /usr/local/bin. Personally, my shell configuration always gets
> $HOME/bin added to my path.

  The typical user (even the typical Unix developer) doesn't even install
packages from source any more.  It's all "where can I get the binaries?"
these days.  Kids.  Sheesh. [2]

> >   3. I have an issue with your Windows version of an absolute path.  On
> >Unix, '/' as the start marks an absolute path, but that's only because Unix
> >does not have the concept of drive letters.  On Windows though, you have
> >	path/...
> >which is a relative path to the current location.  Then you have
> >	//...
> >which is an abolute path on the current drive, and then
> 
> No, just /.... is an absolute path on the current drive. 

  I got confused.  I'm so used to see Windows paths written as:

	C:\\PATH\\TO\\HELL\\PAVED\\WITH\\GOOD\\INTENTIONS

beacuse the '\' is used as an escape character, so to use a literal '\' you
need to escape it, depending on the context.

> >[1]	Yes, that *IS* a valid path in Windows.  The Windows kernel does not
> >	care if you use '/' or '\' as a path separator and will happily
> >	accept both.  It's just the default Windows command line that
> >	bitches, and only because Windows (and MS-DOS, the precursor to
> >	Windows) used '/' to mark command line options [2][3].
> 
> Valid though it may be, Windows users are not encouraged to know that 
> there is a second choice. As a long time Windows developer, I'd argue 
> that permitting both slashes in file names really was a mistake. It has 
> led to a lot of complacency about path parsing in "portable" code that 
> has caused a lot of pain. 

  How much pain is it to tell users when to use

	C:\PATH\TO\HELL

vs.

	C:\\PATH\\TO\\HELL

and why you sometimes need to double up the backslases [6] and sometimes
not?

> I suspect that just making Windows be 
> different would have been less painful in the long run. Of course, if 
> the future could have been predicted in the 1980s, then making DOS 
> ignore CP/M, every DEC OS, and I believe IBM mainframe conventions to 
> follow Unix and use / for path names and not for command line options 
> would have been the best answer. But who would have predicted then that 
> Unix and descendants would still be a live, viable OS in 2013?

  Heck, COBOL is still shambling about.

  -spc (Heck, who could have predicted the 8080 would still be with us?)

[1]	Yes, I realize it's probably not a completely dead concept but it's
	not nearly as universal as it once was.

[2]	There is a large amount of implied sarcasm there.  Or humor.  Or
	something. [3]

[3]	"Get off my lawn!" [4]

[4]	And get me my onion! [5]

[5]	Obscure Simpons reference.

[6]	I'm sorry, but '/' is NOT the backslash.  Bloody Window users [2].