Re: CVS commit: src/bin/hostname

[Mouse <mouse%Rodents-Montreal.ORG@localhost>]

> If my laptop moves back and forth between multiple sites, [...] does
> its "real" hostname change every time it moves?

> Ultimately the "real" hostname [...] is how you refer to the computer
> and distinguish it from others you deal with.

That's one reasonable definition of a machine's hostname: it's a
human-layer name for the machine.

But it's far from the only reasonable definition.  Another one is "some
name, resolvable, with respect to the context the name is used in, to
some nonempty set of addresses at which the machine can be reached
from within that context" - ie, loosely, a name at which it can be
reached.  There are probably others, though none come to me in a second
or two of thought.

Which one you prefer is, of course, likely to affect your stance on
some, possibly all, of these hostname(1) flags.  I don't have any horse
in this race; my opinion on the flags is not affected by this question,
and I'd need to think about it a good deal more to figure out what I
think a machine's "real" hostname is.  But I see a "talking past one
another" event threatening to shape up here between people who have
different assumptions about what a machine's "real" hostname is and
would prefer to head it off if feasible.

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