[arch-dev-public] Removal of skill and snice from procps-ng

[Dave Reisner]

On Thu, May 24, 2012 at 08:40:44PM -0400, Eric Bélanger wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> In the new 3.3.3 upstream update of procps-ng, the skill and snice
> utilities are no longer built by default. According to the man page:
> "These tools are obsolete and unportable.  The command syntax is
> poorly defined.  Consider using the killall, pkill, and pgrep commands
> instead."
> 
> I would like to know if there are any objections in removing them from
> the procps-ng package and, more importantly, if there are any packages
> or scripts in the repos that use these tools. If so, we should create
> a TODO list to port them to using  killall, pkill, and pgrep instead.
> We could also keep supplying these tools until upstream decides to
> remove them for good.
> 
> Another way to handle this would be to include them but warn users
> with a post-install message and/or front page news that they will go
> away in the next procps-ng update.  This way, everyone will be warned
> and will have enough time to update their packages and any custom
> scripts. That might be the best option especially if no one knows if
> there are used in packages or not.
> 
> Eric

+1 to dropping outright. Semi-related point of interest -- Redhat has
been throwing around the idea of asking procps-ng to merge with
util-linux.

d