Curl author asks Microsoft to remove curl and wget aliases from PowerShell



    The day before yesterday, Microsoft published PowerShell source code . Thus, this .NET Framework-based automation and configuration tool has become available on Linux.

    Some are skeptical of the Microsoft Loves Linux strategy that the Redmond giant declares. Some people think that Microsoft does not need a console on an operating system that has bash. Usually these are just emotional statements, but there are also quite rational substantiated objections in essence. For example, the program developer curlDaniel Stenberg quite logically says that the presence of the alias of the same name inside PowerShell is curlalso wgetcompletely inappropriate, because it interferes with running normal familiar programs.

    “The curl and wget aliases prevent the use of familiar command-line tools, while not even providing the same functionality,” writes Daniel Stanberg in the pull request for the newly published PowerShell code on Github. “They are completely useless for PowerShell users, but they are confusing for current curl and wget users.”

    Daniel Stanberg’s pull request was supported by 466 other Github users. In fact, the alias curlinside PowerShell introduces some confusion for those who specifically installed curlon Windows and want to run this program from the command line.

    One PowerShell developer answeredto Stanberg’s comment that these aliases were used in different versions of PowerShell, and their removal will be a “breaking change”. Therefore, they reject this pull request because it represents “unacceptable changes” in accordance with the conditions of unacceptable changes that violate backward compatibility and break existing user scripts.

    Daniel Stanberg politely replied that actually adding these aliases to PowerShell was a “breaking change” for people who started curland wgetfrom the console. “No sane person will use these aliases anyway, because your replacement curland wgetworks completely unlike the original teams curlandwget. "These aliases only complicate the lives of users who need real tools, and they do nothing good for those users who do not need these tools."

    PowerShell developers can understand. Everything is clear, and they, too, that the aliases curland wgetmisplaced, but the existing multi-bureaucratic system does not allow them to make such a change on a simple pull-rekvest. Currently, a free PowerShell project is managed by a committee of five maintainers who operate with the knowledge of project managers, who, in turn, are subordinate to senior management in the corporation. Significant changes of this kind require lengthy coordination throughout the corporate hierarchy.

    Developers recognize the problemthat when they added "aliases for Unix teams", then under Windows these aliases prevent normal programs from starting. This needs to be fixed, but formally, such a change is “breaking,” in accordance with an official document. Now the maintainers are holding a meeting on what to do with these Linux aliases and how to solve the problem under Linux and under Windows.

    As a workaround, they suggest manually removing the interfering aliases by adding the following lines to the profile:

    Remove-Item Alias:Curl
    Remove-Item Alias:WGet

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