KDE refuses to start, part 2

[david at thekramers.net (David Kramer)]

On Thursday 20 February 2003 11:45 am, Jeff Kinz wrote:
> resend - (hey - where's the reply-to header? :-) )
>
> On Thu, Feb 20, 2003 at 09:32:06AM -0500, Ken Gosier wrote:
> > after renaming to .bashrc.old, voila, kde starts again! So after
> > investigating the .bashrc file, it turns out the offending line was
> > (drumroll please...)
> >
> > set -o noclobber
> >
> > I'm a little worried that this now confirms my status as a Redhat luser.
> >
> > :-/ But seriously, this seems strange to me that a simple thing like this
> >
> > will cause kde so many problems. Am I just complaining, or should kde be
> > able to deal more gracefully with something like this?
>
> No.  KDE is expecting a normal UNIX-style environment.  One of the most
> basic tenets of the UNIX philosophy is "Let the user/program do anything it
> wants". It is the responsibility of the user/program not to do anything
> harmful.
>
> An environment with the noclobber option on is a totally different one from
> the normal UNIX-style environment.  It is more, shall we say "VMS like"?

I'm not buying this.  

The root of the problem is not that the program expects noclobber to be off, 
the root of the problem is that the program tried to interract with its 
environment, and did not check for success or failure and report a 
descriptive error message upon failure.   I don't care what languate you're 
using, who the target audience is, or whether you got paid for writing it or 
not, that is "stuff you have to do in your program".

It's a bug.

-------------------------------------------------------------------
DDDD   David Kramer                           http://thekramers.net
DK KD  "A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any 
DKK D  invention in human history--with the possible exceptions
DK KD  of handguns and tequila."                     Mitch Ratliffe
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