Re: MESSAGE considered harmful

["J. Lewis Muir" <jlmuir%imca-cat.org@localhost>]

On 1/30/15 7:04 AM, Greg Troxel wrote:
>> If 'make install' leaves the software in an unsafe (default password)
>> or unusable state, I think a MESSAGE is warranted.
>
> That is more or less what I meant by "very limited circumstances where
> there is an articulated reason why it really makes sense".  If MESSAGE
> were only used for those situations, I wouldn't have commented.  In
> wip, there are 258 MESSAGE files and 27 MESSAGE.* files.  I read a
> few of the unsuffixed ones and skimmed the MESSAGE.* and didn't see
> anything that needed to be shouted at the user vs just documentation.
> In net/, there are 90 MESSAGE files in 794 packages.  I skimmed
> those, and they seem almost entirely normal documentation.  There are
> currently 1064 MESSAGE files in my tree (mostly 2014Q4, some HEAD,
> including wip).  Without a real basis, that seems like far more than
> are warranted.
>
> Also, I'd say that if make install leaves the system in a bad state
> (rather than with just extra software not being run), then the package
> is buggy and should be fixed.

+1 I want the default to be safe/secure, even if the package has to
go out of its way to make it that way.  The user can then configure
or enable things, but without doing anything, the default should be
safe/secure.

Lewis