The future of fortune(6)

[Warner Losh]

On Wed, Nov 22, 2017 at 9:29 AM, Benno Rice <benno at freebsd.org> wrote:

> Hello, all!
>
> With the removal of the fortune datfiles I think it’s time to have a
> discussion about fortune(6).
>
> fortune now defaults to using a fortune file that no longer exists:
>
> $ fortune
> No fortunes found in /usr/share/games/fortune:/usr/
> local/share/games/fortune.
>
> fortune is still used in the default .login/.profile to show entries from
> the still existing freebsd-tips:
>
> $ grep fortune /usr/share/skel/*
> /usr/share/skel/dot.login:if ( -x /usr/bin/fortune ) /usr/bin/fortune
> freebsd-tips
> /usr/share/skel/dot.profile:if [ -x /usr/bin/fortune ] ; then
> /usr/bin/fortune freebsd-tips ; fi
> $ fortune freebsd-tips
> If you need a reminder to leave your terminal, type "leave +hhmm" where
> "hhmm" represents in how many hours and minutes you need to leave.
>                 -- Dru <genesis at istar.ca>
>
> fortune also still has flags for showing offensive entries and the like.
>
> I would like people’s opinion on which of the following two paths we
> should take:
>
> 1) Complete removal of fortune and freebsd-tips, remove its usage from the
> default .login/.profile files.
>
> 2) Reworking fortune(6) to remove the offensive fortune flag and make
> freebsd-tips the default, possibly by symlinking it as
> /usr/share/games/fortune/fortunes.
>
> Personally I lean towards the first option.
>

(3) Do #1 except replace fortune with a single line shell script:

#!/bin/sh

to not break everybody's login scripts. Possibly with an optional echo
"please remove fortune from .profile/.cshrc"

I personally lean towards #2 though. I think the freebsd-tips are useful.

Warner