Please add GNU id-utils to Fedora

[Jim Meyering]

Miloslav Trmač wrote:
> On Thu, May 10, 2012 at 9:49 PM, Greg McGary <greg.mcgary at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 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.
>
> Yeah, that's come up before.  There's no great solution I'm afraid,
> one or the other will have to change

Technically there is no need to change a name.
In Debian, one can have two lid programs installed, one in /usr/bin
and the other in /usr/sbin[*], so why not in Fedora?

Sure, a different solution would be better, but renaming a command like
idutils' lid (in use by some for >15 years) does not seem reasonable.

Any opinions on whether this issue is big enough to NAK
a review request or addition of the package to Fedora?

> and the only data I've seen is
> debian's popcon, which indicated that libuser is used more widely.

That counts how often the package is installed.  Note that libuser
is installed primarily for its library, whereas idutils is installed
solely for the use of its programs.

Of course, popcon says little about how much libuser's
rarely-useful-to-non-root "lid" program is actually run.

>> 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.
>
> Ordinary users can set up a different configuration to run
> unprivileged (in particular, to manage a LDAP user database).

My guess is that unprivileged use of libuser's "lid" is unusual.

Jim

[*] Confirmed: libuser and idutils packages coexist just fine on Debian:

  debian# type -a lid
  lid is /usr/sbin/lid
  lid is /usr/bin/lid