Comment by burntsushi
6 hours ago
Yeah the name collision is unfortunate, but probably fine. The name Biff was just too good to pass up.
The name comes from the fact that Biff is a character in Back to the Future, and it rhymes with Jiff[1]. Jiff is the datetime library that Biff uses.
"Make like a tree and get out of here!" https://www.youtube.com/shorts/9Jabplo2pZU
> Yeah the name collision is unfortunate, but probably fine.
collisions, lol
(along with 9 more matches without biff in command name)
Those are:
1. Not precise name collisions.
2. All mail-notification utilities, as was the original biff.
And since we're mentioning Debian, it has a policy requiring unique names within the Debian archive to be unique. Precedence goes to the earlier software packaged. Installed programs must also have unique names within a given system. The datetime Swiss army knife utility discussed here violates both policies.
As Debian policy is used both for Debian and derived distros (see: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Linux_distributions#De...> for a partial listing), it has considerable influence.
I've renamed the project to bttf :-)
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> Yeah the name collision is unfortunate, but probably fine. The name Biff was just too good to pass up.
So if I do an "apt install biff" on Debian (or Ubuntu) what will happen?
* https://packages.debian.org/search?keywords=biff
If I type in "biff" on a Debian CLI, what should I expect the behaviour of the program that is executed to be? Will it be something about mail or time?
Per Debian policy and precedence of the email notification utility, you'll install biff, the command-line email notification utility:
<https://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-binary.html#the-...>
<https://packages.debian.org/trixie/biff>
I know that if you want `fd` (https://github.com/sharkdp/fd) you need to `apt install fd-find` and which installs the binary `fdfind` (!).
I honestly don't know. Which is... Not Great.
It was a great opportunity to name a unix tool "mcfly" or just "Marty" for time manipulation. Better luck next time, I guess.
docbrown would be more appropriate, as the character who's actually doing the time manipulation.
That's... not terrible. Biff isn't exactly popular (yet?), so a name change isn't out of the question. Both of those names (and `biff`) are already taken on crates.io. Which is maybe not a huge problem. IDK. Naming is hard.
https://crates.io/search?q=bttf
// backronym bttf stands for biff time to format
8 replies →
Naming is hard, sure, but doing some due diligence up front to see what's already being used isn't very difficult. Very neat tool.
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As the author of a different project also named Biff, I do have to warn you that half the comments on your HN posts will be people quoting back to the future--though I haven't decided yet if that's annoying or an engagement hack!
[1] https://github.com/jacobobryant/biff
Back to the Future jokes never get old. I love it.
I still want one of those hover boards!
hellooo short-shorts
https://preview.redd.it/75ojrs5mzfcg1.jpeg?width=1024&auto=w...
Griff is still available for future projects or Buford if you create a throwback project.
B1FF IS LIMITED TO 22 COLUMNZ