On Wed, 21 Mar 2001, Alistair Crooks wrote:
> I think we all get the picture by now that you don't like digest.

The point is not digest, but the whole implementation. I've mentioned
several of the flaws before, but didn't even get an answer on it so far.


> So, let's assume for a moment that we ditch digest, and move to a
> modified cksum(1) utility.

Using one external utility over another one is the smallest problem here.


To recap, some of the problems that I see with the current implementation
are:

 * the handling of the digest pkg bypasses the normal dependency handling
   at large, where it could be used. Simply depending on digest>=xxxxx
   would be enough, yet the wheel was reinvented there.
 * Having all the code in an external utility (outside pkg_*) prevents
   us from using the new digest formats inside the +CONTENT files. I'm
   quite surprised that this was not considered to be worth fixing when
   this went in in the first step. 
 * And finally, it was claimed that cksum(1) was too hard to modify to
   add new algorithms. I think that's proved wrong now. My point is, if
   you had actually bothered discussing things and give some time for
   testing, we could have avoided a whole lot of mess.

So, let's not blame it on the digest pkg, which is the smallest problem
here. 


 - Hubert

-- 
Hubert Feyrer <hubert.feyrer@informatik.fh-regensburg.de>