bin/144531: [patch] cp(1) show percentage complete

[Alexander Best]

The following reply was made to PR bin/144531; it has been noted by GNATS.

From: Alexander Best <arundel at freebsd.org>
To: bug-followup at freebsd.org
Cc:  
Subject: Re: bin/144531: [patch] cp(1) show percentage complete
Date: Tue, 24 Aug 2010 02:22:14 +0000

 hi there,
 
 i don't think the original patch you submitted will be accepted by any
 developer since it breaks the behaviour of `cp -v`. you might want to add a new
 switch to trigger the extra output from your patch. just be sure you don't use
 any switch that's already taken by POSIX [1].
 
 however personally i don't think that your patch will be committed even with a
 new switch. `cp` has been the way it is for a very long time and i don't think
 people want it to change.
 
 you might want to open a new thread on freebsd-hackers@ or freebsd-current@ and
 ask what the developers think about your patch. this might trigger some
 interest in this PR. the fact however is that there are a lot of PRs with great
 and useful additions to FreeBSD. however most people that are using FreeBSD on
 a daily basis don't want basic applications like `cp` to change. even if a
 developer would commit your patch it is most likely that he'll be forced to
 revert the changes due to the fact that other developers don't see the need for
 such a change. i would expect the argument to be something like this:
 
 "the behavior of cp hasn't change since 1977. cp didn't need this feature
 back then and it doesn't need it now."
 
 personally i don't agree with this point of view. good luck and i hope your
 patch will somehow make it into the tree. i've applied your patch to my local
 src tree and try to use the -v when copying large files. i really like it. :)
 
 cheers.
 alex
 
 [1] http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/
 
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 a13x