bin/67236: file(1) does a poor job of recognizing Makefiles

[Simon L. Nielsen]

On 2004.05.27 15:38:16 -0700, Ronald F. Guilmette wrote:
> 
> In message <200405272144.i4RLiWep030847 at freefall.freebsd.org>, you wrote:
> 
> >Synopsis: file(1) does a poor job of recognizing Makefiles
> >
> >State-Changed-From-To: open->closed
> >State-Changed-By: simon
> >State-Changed-When: Thu May 27 14:44:29 PDT 2004
> >State-Changed-Why: 
> >File is externally maintained and FreeBSD does not make local
> >modifications to it, so please take this up with the find developers.
> >You can find file at ftp://ftp.astron.com/pub/file/.
> >Note: there is a new version of find available, but I tested
> >it and it does not do a better job of detecting makefiles.
> >
> >http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/query-pr.cgi?pr=67236
> 
> Excuse me, but it would appear that your suggestion that I take up
> this issue with the (external) maintainer of file(1) may be impractical
> for this simple reason that the specific version of the file(1)
> command that is being distributed, at present, with reasonably recent
> releases of FreeBSD (e.g. 5.2.1)... that is, file-3.41 (according to
> the output of `file -v') is clearly obsolete and, more importantly,

Edwin has responded to the most important parts, but I will just add a
few more comments.

I noticed that the file version on the base system was "old" which why
I noted in the PR close mail, that there was a new version of file
available (even though I for some reason wrote "find"), and that it
also seemed to detect the few makefile's I tested as English text.

As Edwin noted, there is a file(1) port so you can test a 4.X version.
The Makefile detection is not specific to FreeBSD which is also why I
think it's better to contact the file authors.

I hope this makes it more clear that closing the PR wasn't meant as
"Go away, we don't care", but rather that you have a much better
chance of getting this fixed/improved by contacting the file(1)
authors.


-- 
Simon L. Nielsen
FreeBSD Documentation Team
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