ntpq quirk

[Hal Murray]

esr at thyrsus.com said:
> Can you audit your script usage to find out what abbreviatons you actually
> use? 

Not reasonably.


> There are two problems with this possibility. The more serious one is that
> it requires introspecting on the members of our cmd.Cmd instance.  That is
> an unstable area of the Python API - it changed sigificantly between 2 and
> 3, and might well change again in the future.  It's the kind of thing where
> yes, you can do it, but you're begging for a future maintainence problem if
> you do. 

Can the code determine at run time if it's running on python 2 or 3?  If so, 
I think we should consider maintaining 2 versions of the lookup code.

> The less serious, more general problem is simply that it adds complexity and
> potential points of failure, something I am reluctant to do without better
> reason than I presently think we have here. 

I'm a bit surprised that the python crowd hasn't implemented something like 
this.  It seems handy, but yes, it breaks learned behavior when somebody adds 
a new command that collides.

------------

I don't think changing the UI is as big a deal as handling it correctly.  
We've already nuked lots of features for various reasons.

Burying it in NEWS isn't good enough.  I think we need a separate document 
that summarizes the changes with pointers to NEWS (or some other file) for 
the details.  Besides, NEWS is chronological.  That just adds a layer of 
obfuscation.


-- 
These are my opinions.  I hate spam.