On Sat, 18.06.11 16:39, Aaron Sowry (aaron+rh(a)aeneby.se) wrote:
> > - The same command outputs column headers on tty, and no
headers
> > otherwise. This is inconsistent. If I am outputting to a file, or
> > perhaps a printer, and want headers on my non-tty output, I have to
> > add them myself since there is no flag to force them on non-tty
> > channels. If I don't want them and they are present, I tail.
>
> I am pretty sure that if you ask us nicely, we'll add an option to
> enable headers nonetheless. It's however usually simpler if you pipe
> something not to have to use tail/head.
Yet another flag to work around inconsistent behaviour is the last thing
systemctl needs. Simplicity is not the issue here - you are assuming that output
piped to something other than a tty is not destined for human eyes. I shouldn't
have to convince you that this is nonsense, and will only get worse if --full is
applied automatically to all non-tty output. Shall we add a --no-full flag to
work around this, too?
You know, I'd prefer if you take up your beef with "ls" first. Have you
ever compared the output of "ls" and of "ls | cat"? And that's
just the
most obvious case.
Generating slightly different output on a tty than when used in another
way is deeply rooted in Linux heritage. Autopaging is just a small step
forward in that area. And a very welcome one. In this regard systemd is
just following the evolution of Linux. We are not revolutionizing in
this area, and we are not pioneering either.
> > - Currently, if I run 'systemctl --all' and have no
pager (at least no
> > pager that systemctl knows of) available, I get an error message and
> > no output. This is horribly bad form, and forces me to use
> > --no-pager or pipe to cat in order to get output. This issue is
> > acknowledged in RH bug 713707.
>
> We generally do not support if people delete arbitrary things from their
> installation. /bin/more is part of util-linux, and if you delete that
> then you broke your system, so don't complain to us please.
It is difficult to concieve where systemd might end up in future.
And how does that matter for Fedora?
Is util-linux a systemd dependency?
Yes, absolutely. systemd depends on util-linux for the gettys, for fsck,
for mount, for umount, for swapoff, for swapon -- all these commands are
more than just wrappers around kernel functionality and are pretty much
the Linux API for the respective functionality.
> > - Another bright idea (RH bug 713567) is that --full should
be applied
> > to non-tty output automatically, and not to tty output.
>
> Yes, it actually makes sense and has been requested which is why we
> implemented it.
This is being implemented now?
Hmm? Implicit --full when using a pager has been the default since quite
some time in systemd.
> > No other Linux/UNIX tools make this assumption (with
> > perhaps the exception of git-log et. al.), and if you are wanting
> > administrators to feel comfortable with your new soon-to-be-ubiquitous
> > tools, then I suggest you try to be consistent with existing
> > convention.
>
> I think you are mixing up "administrators" with "Aaron Sowry".
Not really. All other administrators use exactly the same tools I do, very few
of which behave like systemctl. Having to deal with command-specific behaviour
only makes it more difficult to learn a new tool.
Yupp, as I see it it eases an administrator's life.
I guess we just have to agree to disagree on this, and leave it at
this. Sorry if that is disappointing.
Lennart
--
Lennart Poettering - Red Hat, Inc.