[Adduser-devel] Bug#521883: adduser: Please accept underscore prefixed system names

[Guillem Jover]

Hi!

On Thu, 2016-11-24 at 15:54:41 -0800, Afif Elghraoui wrote:
> على الأحد 23 تشرين الأول 2016 ‫06:52، كتب Guillem Jover:
> > Control: tags -1 patch
> > Control: retitle -1 adduser: Please accept underscore prefixed system names
> > 
> [...]
> > I've implemented a new SYS_NAME_REGEX so that at least system names
> > can accept _-prefixed values. This is the standard used on various
> > BSDs, it is vendor neutral (not just a Debianism), and it is short
> > causing way less display problems.
> > 
> > I don't think accepting _-prefixed names for normal users would be
> > wise, as that would remove the namespaced disctinction.
> > 
> > Having this in the archive would allow us to promote these system
> > names, and use them w/o needing the --force-badname option!

> This is somewhat similar to #432562. The difference, as I see it, is
> capital letters + compatibility with Ubuntu versus underscores +
> compatibility with BSDs. I don't see that any of the breakage concerns
> originally raised in #432562 apply to this suggestion.

Well using _-prefix is vendor neutral, and shorter so in addition
causes less display issues.

> I am also in favor of reducing unnecessary incompatibilities that can
> cause confusion. People of #432562, do you have any comments?

At least Ian seemed to retract his previous support for Debian-style
names in <https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2016/10/msg00577.html>,
but I'll let him confirm this.

I also think allowing Debian-style names by default would be a bad
idea, and I'm glad that bug is marked as wontfix. ;)

(You might also like to check the thread starting at
<https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2016/10/msg00546.html>.)

Thanks,
Guillem