Re: Proposal: remove usr.bin/mkstr

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

> [...issues with mkstr...]

> Distributing such crappy programs hurts the reputation of NetBSD
> delivering quality software,

Does it?  I have yet to hear of anyone thinking any the less of NetBSD
for including mkstr, excepting any directly derived from this thread.
I was not even aware NetBSD shipped anything called mkstr until I saw
this thread.

> therefore it should be removed.

I have experimented with it and find that what it actually does is not
what the manpage led me to think it does - though I can see a close
enough relation that I think I could write an accurate manpage.

If it is not in fact in live use, what NetBSD does with it matters
somewhere between "very little" and "not at all".

If it is in fact in live use, someone obviously has found a use for it
despite its various string-mangling bugs and misleading documentation.

If this call were mine to make?  I would add a few lines to mkstr to
print a message to stderr, maybe something along the lines of

	NetBSD is considering removing mkstr; please contact
	tech-userlevel%netbsd.org@localhost if you would like to see it
	maintained.  To suppress this message in the meantime, set
	MKSTR_SUPPRESS_MESSAGE in the environment.

Then, after a couple of releases, and of course assuming nobody
squawks, dump it.

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