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Your wget (and curl) is Broken and Should DIE, GitHubbers Tell Microsoft

posted by cmn32480 on Tuesday August 23 2016, @10:58AM   Printer-friendly
from the parts-of-the-basic-toolset dept.

"exec" writes:

Well, that didn't take long: within a week of applause for Microsoft's decision to open-source PowerShell, a comment-war has broken out over curl and wget.

For those not familiar with these commands: they're open source command line tools for fetching Internet content without a browser. Apart from obvious applications like downloading whole sites (for example as backup), they're also under the hood for a lot of other toolsets (an example the author is familiar with – GIS tools use curl and/or wget to fetch maps from Web services).

For some reason, Microsoft's team decided to put aliases for curl and wget in Windows PowerShell – but, as this thread begins, those aliases don't deliver curl and wget functionality.

The pull request says the aliases should be spiked: "They block use of the commonly used command line tools without providing even an attempt to offer the same functionality. They serve no purpose for PowerShell users but cause confusion and problems to existing curl and wget users."

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/08/23/your_wget_is_broken_and_should_die_powershellers_tell_microsoft/

-- submitted from IRC

Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by sendafiolorkar on Tuesday August 23 2016, @12:27PM

    by sendafiolorkar (6300) on Tuesday August 23 2016, @12:27PM (#392080)

    People keep using shity and broken software and getting surprised that the software is shity and broken.

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    Total Score:   5  

  • (Score: 1) by kurenai.tsubasa on Tuesday August 23 2016, @12:53PM

    by kurenai.tsubasa (5227) on Tuesday August 23 2016, @12:53PM (#392088) Journal

    Like I was wondering in the other thread, how much pain will people tolerate? Because that's how much pain Micros~1 is going to apply. If we get lucky, they'll go too far.

    • (Score: 3, Informative) by redneckmother on Tuesday August 23 2016, @01:24PM

      by redneckmother (3597) on Tuesday August 23 2016, @01:24PM (#392103)

      If we get lucky, they'll go too far.

      Too late... as far as I'm concerned, they went too far a couple of decades ago (that's when I cut those apron strings).

      --
      Mas cerveza por favor.

  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by lentilla on Tuesday August 23 2016, @01:35PM

    by lentilla (1770) on Tuesday August 23 2016, @01:35PM (#392109)

    This would be the "embrace" portion of the triptych. Duplicate the simple functionality and it will suffice.

    What happens next? Hackers; being interested types; duly read the documentation and outline the anomalies in bug reports. In the meantime, these hackers alter their applications to work within the new constraints.

    The next chapter is "extend". Microsoft "listens to developers" and subsequently improves functionality - and (oh, thankfully!) - there is now no need to directly use wget or curl. (Although if you really need to use the "real deal", there is a knowledge base article available that might; in theory; do what was initially required.)

    Finally there will be "extinguish". But we always knew that was coming.

    The only rational response is to reject Microsoft's offering by ignoring it.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 23 2016, @01:42PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 23 2016, @01:42PM (#392113)

    shitty even

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 23 2016, @07:32PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 23 2016, @07:32PM (#392252)

    People keep using shity and broken software and getting surprised that the software is shity and broken.

    In all fairness, anybody writing a script to run on other systems would be checking the executable exists using `which` and assigning the full path to a variable... unless that is they are a complete moron!