There are two conflicting implementations of a parallel utility. And from what I can tell, the GNU parallel utility is much more useful than the one in moreutils. Which meant that when I was 1) doing processing which benefited greatly from parallelization and 2) found that the moreutils version wasn't doing what I wanted nor could I figure out how to make it do so (compounded by confusion over online searched providing GNU parallels syntax which didn't work), I had to remove the entire moreutils set to install GNU parallels under Debian.
The two versions aren't even a candidate for /etc/alternatives resolution as the commandline syntax and behavior differs.
Either a name change or refactoring to a different package for the 'parallel' utility would avoid much of this.
And I'd really like to see numutils packaged.
Also: 'unsort': sort -R | --random-sort
(using GNU coreutils 8.23)
(I'm not familiar with a seed-based randomized sorting utility though.)
Joey's apparent resistance to simply splitting out 'parallel' to its own package is ... disappointing. His final comment (regarding other utilities in upstream and switches) is non sequiturs and red herrings.
Where boneheads like Joey get to block trivial fixes for decades (5 years and counting in this case). The project really needs a better process to terminate 'lame' maintainers.
There are two conflicting implementations of a parallel utility. And from what I can tell, the GNU parallel utility is much more useful than the one in moreutils. Which meant that when I was 1) doing processing which benefited greatly from parallelization and 2) found that the moreutils version wasn't doing what I wanted nor could I figure out how to make it do so (compounded by confusion over online searched providing GNU parallels syntax which didn't work), I had to remove the entire moreutils set to install GNU parallels under Debian.
The two versions aren't even a candidate for /etc/alternatives resolution as the commandline syntax and behavior differs.
Either a name change or refactoring to a different package for the 'parallel' utility would avoid much of this.
And I'd really like to see numutils packaged.
Also: 'unsort': sort -R | --random-sort
(using GNU coreutils 8.23)
(I'm not familiar with a seed-based randomized sorting utility though.)