The future of fortune(6)

[Joshua Armstrong]

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-freebsd-hackers at freebsd.org [mailto:owner-freebsd-hackers at freebsd.org] On Behalf Of Warner Losh
Sent: Wednesday, November 22, 2017 10:36 AM
To: Benno Rice
Cc: freebsd-hackers at freebsd.org; freebsd-arch at freebsd.org
Subject: Re: The future of fortune(6)

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

I also think the tips on login are helpful. I would be in favor of making freebsd-tips the default cookie file (with the possibility of supplying other files as well) and removing the offensive option.

Sorry for top-posting before. I had no idea that MS Outlook was so terrible. :(

-Joshua