GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 751694
Version string should be printed to stdout
Last modified: 2015-08-20 04:50:36 UTC
Created attachment 306364 [details] [review] Print version string to stdout While running 'gnome-taquin --version', the version string is printed to stderr. It should be printed to stdout. By the way, my first bug report, and my first patch. :-)
I mostly began adding the --version option on many binaries. Welcome here! Looks like most of the games (at least) are printing the version on stderr; but I agree it is weird, I do not see any reason for that. I’m going to ask for a confirmation on IRC to other devs, and make all the games in a row (no need to open more bugs). Thanks for reporting, I’ll update the bug status when all that’s done.
My guess is that about half of GNOME apps use stdout and half use stderr. This is one of those things the UNIX community has never been able to standardize. I would favor stdout, since it's not an error.
I don't know about Unix standards. But GNU standards recommends (mandates in GNU packages) to print version string to stdout. Also, its very common to check version of a software using shell scripts, which usually checks for stdout, and not stderr. See a relevant python bug report: https://bugs.python.org/issue18338
Relevant link to GNU standards: https://www.gnu.org/prep/standards/html_node/_002d_002dversion.html
I will use stdout from now on myself, then :)
I pushed a patch for the 3.17.90 unstable release of Taquin, thanks for the bug report. I hope I’ll find the time to do all the other games.
Stupid me, I was so tired yesterday that I forgot to use your patch, sorry for that. (I’m thinking of that because I maintain the tab open, to remember doing so everywhere!) But you’ve of course been named in the NEWS file. I’ll do better next time.
(In reply to Arnaud Bonatti from comment #7) > Stupid me, I was so tired yesterday that I forgot to use your patch, sorry > for that. (I’m thinking of that because I maintain the tab open, to remember > doing so everywhere!) But you’ve of course been named in the NEWS file. I’ll > do better next time. Its OK. Happy to contribute to GNOME codebase, the first time.