#1147389 Please consider renaming `bat` binary (typically used as GUI application)

Package:
bacula-console-qt
Source:
bacula-console-qt
Description:
network backup service - Bacula Administration Tool
Submitter:
Josh Triplett
Date:
2026-09-15 19:35:02 UTC
Severity:
normal
#1147389#3
Date:
2026-09-11 13:57:21 UTC
From:
To:
bacula-console-qt ships the Bacula Admin Tool as `/usr/sbin/bat`. This
is a GUI tool, and has a `.desktop` file pointing to it.

Meanwhile, there is a Debian package for the `bat` command-line tool,
very commonly invoked via the command line. People are accustomed to
using that tool as `bat` in other distributions, but Debian ships it as
`batcat` to avoid conflicts with Bacula. (This rename originally
occurred to avoid conflict with a different package that was more
commonly invoked via the command line; the rename was preserved to avoid
conflict with Bacula.) This is sufficiently awkward that users sometimes
use diversions or symlinks or similar to work around it.

`bat` upstream reached out to Bacula upstream, in
https://gitlab.bacula.org/bacula-community-edition/bacula-community/-/issues/2774
. Bacula's upstream maintainer said:

Would you be willing to consider shipping the executable in Debian as
`bacula-bat`, and updating the `.desktop` file accordingly? This would
then allow Debian to maintain cross-distribution compatibility for users
of the `bat` command-line tool commonly found in other distributions.

Thank you for considering this.

- Josh

#1147389#8
Date:
2026-09-15 19:15:50 UTC
From:
To:
The arguments that bat is usually run via the .desktop file and not
directly from the console (plus bat is rarely used anyway nowadays) are
reasonable, thus I have made the necessary changes to rename the binary
to bacula-bat in the next upload to Debian.

Grüße,
Sven.