[arch-general] drop dependencies on legacy inetutils for `hostname`

[Geert Hendrickx]

On Thu, Aug 27, 2020 at 14:34:41 -0400, Eli Schwartz via arch-general wrote:
> Why is it bad if you have it installed but not running?


FS#41834 as an example.  Or FS#28819.  There is just no good reason to keep
dragging purely historic crap like inetutils on so many Arch systems just
because a few common tools want `hostname`.


> Or 4) submit upstream patches to make such programs first try to read
> /proc/sys/kernel/hostname instead of shelling out, or invoke `uname -n`
> rather than `hostname`.


Yes, that's what I just added. ;-)  However `cat /proc/sys/kernel/hostname`
is even less portable than `hostname`.  `uname -n` is defined by POSIX and
thus preferred.  A few upstreams already agreed on that.


> The gettext thing seems like deep, dark magic, [...]  I don't think we
> should be relying on this level of indirection. It could be dropped at
> any time.


Yes, I realized that once looking deeper into the gettext implementation,
it should not be relied on.  If we really want a /usr/bin/hostname in base,
better just make it a wrapper around `uname -n`.


> Eventually we will have
> https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/User:Allan/Alternatives and then
> you could install your own preferred hostname implementation without
> conflicts. It would not be unreasonable at that time to make packages
> depend on a virtual provides for "hostname".


Seems overkill for trivial utilities like hostname.  It's not like
switching between different JDK implementations or such.


	Geert



-- 
geert.hendrickx.be :: geert at hendrickx.be :: PGP: 0xC4BB9E9F
This e-mail was composed using 100% recycled spam messages!