Unzip utility choice decision

Dangling Pointer danglingpointer at outlook.com
Fri Dec 25 08:59:42 UTC 2015


If my race-condition usecase is hard to reproduce (since it requires you to spawn unzip as a child process in multiple threads simultaneously), see http://www.unix.com/man-page/freebsd/1/unzip/ vs. http://www.unix.com/man-page/linux/1/unzip/ for the "at-the-glance HUGE difference". Mind you, mine is not the only usecase which requires install overhead of "unzip from ports". 
> The answer is of course for the more permissive license.
Is it? This is exactly what I have asked in first post: What is the point of having another unzip utility with lesser implementation and options, when we already have one. Is it because of license differences? Yes/No (preferably in a non-sarcastic manner..)
I am not sure about the answer, that is why I am asking.
If the license is "not" the issue (since other Unices are using the ORIGINAL unzip utility OOTB), then FreeBSD team should consider adapting to the same for cent percent conformity. Otherwise this question will get its due answer and I would vouch for having it renamed to something like unzip2, so consumers know unzip2 (which comes pre-installed) and unzip (which can be installed by issuing `pkg install unzip`) are two different utilities, with different authors, different licenses and different set of options.

> Date: Wed, 23 Dec 2015 09:23:47 +0100
> Subject: Unzip utility choice decision
> From: woodsb02 at gmail.com
> To: danglingpointer at outlook.com
> CC: freebsd-questions at freebsd.org
> 
> On Wednesday, 23 December 2015, Dangling Pointer <
> danglingpointer at outlook.com
> <javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','danglingpointer at outlook.com');>> wrote:
> 
> > Those options are not contradictory with `pkg install unzip` version. That
> > -uoq combination is an advance usage which save us from a race condition.
> >
> 
> Can you please explain this race condition further, and how the -uoq flags
> combined help prevent it when running simultaneous unzip commands?
> 
> 
> >
> > What I am really saying is:
> >
> > There is a universally known unzip utility which offers many options and
> > then there is FreeBSD version of unzip with less options. That makes no
> > sense to me. Why would you want to have a separate unzip utility?
> >
> 
> This is for the same reason that there is a "universally recognized"
> document editor called Microsoft Word. Why would you have a separate Open
> Office application? The answer is of course for the more permissive license.
> 
> Regards,
> Ben
> 
> 
> -- 
> 
> --
> From: Benjamin Woods
> woodsb02 at gmail.com
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