Please add GNU id-utils to Fedora

Greg McGary greg.mcgary at gmail.com
Thu May 10 19:49:09 UTC 2012


It would be great if GNU id-utils could be included in future Fedora releases.

id-utils is a long-standing GNU package that creates a database of program
identifiers, then allows queries from the command line or from an editor.
Its primary virtue is speed.  Think of it as an optimized "grep" which goes
fast because the database tells it exactly which files to search.  It really
shines on very large source-code trees, giving instant results where grep would
get bogged-down in tons of extra I/O on files that don't contain hits.

id-utils also benefits from already having Jim Meyering as its maintainer.

Minor conflict: the name of one of id-utils main commands "lid" is also the
same as an existing command, though installed in a different place.  id-utils
has /usr/bin/lid, while libuser has /usr/sbin/lid.

This conflict is exceedingly minor since /usr/sbin/lid is only usable by root.
Ordinary users who try it get this:

    $ lid foo
    Error initializing libuser: could not open configuration file `/etc/default/useradd': Permission denied.

If there is a strict prohibition against such name conflicts, then I suggest
that libuser should change "lid" to "lugid".  I speculate that the admin users of libuser are far fewer than potential general user base of id-utils, which is a program-development tool.

Greg


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