Dear maintainer,

A lot of Linux distributions today include some small handly aliases, for example:
 ll='ls -l'.

I kindly ask you to uncomment this alias en /etc/skel/.bashrc and thus make it
activated by default on Debian systems.

best regards.

Hi doko,
for example:
thus make it

Could we go ahead and uncomment the default aliases for grep and ls?

I do believe it would be a significant quality of life improvement for
all our users using bash (and I suspect that's quite a lot of them).

Let me know if you don't have time to handle this, I'll be happy to do
an NMU for you.

Patch provided for convenience.

Best,

Dear maintainer,

I've prepared an NMU for bash (versioned as 5.2.21-2.2). The diff is
attached to this message.

I'll upload it in a couple of days with a delay of 14 days. Feel free
to reply to this message, should this NMU not be uploaded.

Regards,

Dear maintainer,

I've prepared an NMU for bash (versioned as 5.2.21-2.2) and
uploaded it to DELAYED/14. Please feel free to tell me if I
should delay it longer.

Regards.

Hi doko,

I hadn't seen your upload from the 20th, sorry about that, I'm
canceling mine.

Dear maintainer,

I've prepared an NMU for bash (versioned as 5.2.32-1.1) and
uploaded it to DELAYED/10. Please feel free to tell me if I
should delay it longer or cancel it.

Regards,

I don't think these should be configured by default. The config files
should be minimal, and not adding some "preferred" aliases. Especially
for ll I've seen to many different ll aliases over time.

Matthias

And if it is going to be enabled shouldnt it be done by uncommenting yhe
use of ~/.bash_aliases (which is in the file but commented out)?

Personally, i also want --color=auto to be added if color was available
(similar to how a  color_prompt is detected), and -h (and isnt there
something for hyperlinks now?) -- but id rather add those myself than have
debian do it

Hi Matthias,

I've canceled the NMU, the time for us to discuss this issue. I want to
make it clear that my goal is to improve bash, not go over the head of
its maintainer.

I agree with you that defaults should not add some "preferred" aliases,
but I would argue that those 'll' defaults are not meant to be
preferred but rather universal defaults.

Just to give you an example, I myself use a variant of that, adding the
'-h' to have human size enabled. That's my preferred aliases and I
would not want to configure it as a default.

However, the goal of defining a minimal common alias is to allow our
users that run a shell from an untouched configuration to have a basic
set of feature that may go beyond what upstream has defined.

Take PS1 for instance. The default for bash is currently set to:

bash-5.2$

I think we can all agree that's not a desired default. Therefor, we
came up with a better default that I would think, is beneficial for all
our users. I would argue the 'll' aliases fit this case.

I would also argue there is no downside of having those 'll' defaults
enabled and a tremendous benefit from having it.

Now, as to the matter at hand: How can we objectively know if those
default are preferred or universal? (or somewhere along those two). I
guess we need data points to mesure how users are interested in this
aliases.

I'll gather some stats about whether or not linux distributions enabled
those by default. I might also setup a poll for DD to get their
feedback on whether they would see those aliases enabled by default an
improvement or not.

Best,