filetype: Depends on non-POSIX file(1) options

Question

filetype: Depends on non-POSIX file(1) options

lanodan opened this issue 3 years ago · comments

Command used in filetype.lua: file -bL --mime-type -- '%s'

As usual, POSIX doesn't have long options on file(1) and sadly there isn't an equivalent option in POSIX (-i in POSIX is for something entirely different btw), the other options are also absent.

That said https://www.darwinsys.com/file/ is basically the de-facto implementation of file(1) on libre unixes (OpenBSD seems to have forked it some years ago) so it's not a big issue but I think it should be noted for packagers.

An annoying part is that popen doesn't seems to allow checking the return value, so if you ended up replacing darwinsys's file(1) with plan9port's file(1) you get a broken vis, I think it should check if the output seems like a correct mime type.

Matěj Cepl · Answer 1 · Wed Nov 30 2022 08:06:59 GMT+0800 (China Standard Time)

Are there any real platforms (real platforms doesn’t include Plan 9 ;)), which doesn’t have darwinsys’s file(1)? Is this actually an issue?

Haelwenn Monnier · Answer 2 · Wed Nov 30 2022 17:37:55 GMT+0800 (China Standard Time)

[2022-11-29 16:07:09-0800] Matěj Cepl:

Are there any real platforms (real platforms doesn’t include Plan 9 ;)), which doesn’t have darwinsys’s `file(1)`? Is this actually an issue?

Not that I'm aware, it's more of a packaging/documentation issue than a portability issue. I think virtually all unixes have darwinsys's file(1) (or compatible for OpenBSD) available, but it's not always installed by default.

Matěj Cepl · Answer 3 · Wed Nov 30 2022 18:05:08 GMT+0800 (China Standard Time)

So, is this an issue at all? This is supposed to be an issue tracker not just a place to contemplate mysteries of life.