Change to a more fitting name

[cheater]

cv, as much as it's an amazing short name, doesn't really relate to what the thing does. I wager a bet that most people won't use the command as any other one-syllable commands (cat, cp, mv, cd, ...) so a longer, more descriptive name would be more fitting. The first thought is "progress" but someone might have a better idea. Typing prog^I will be enough to run it at least on my system (which is a very non-special Ubuntu install)

[SiggyF]

Also note that the command cv is already in use by cdargs. The cdargs package is included in most distributions and installs the cv command as an alias or function.

[qaisjp]

What is prog^I - inverse pipe?

[cheater]

Ctrl-i is the code for tab.

[cheater]

I have noticed my original post is missing a couple words... "I wager a bet that most people won't use the command as often as any other one-syllable commands (cat, cp, mv, cd, ...)". The argument was nonsensical as it stood!

[qaisjp]

How is cd a one-syllable command (see-dee)

[cheater]

Really?

[qaisjp]

Okay well whatever, I think you're right about the vagueness of the name of the project. One would not assume that cv provides progress to these commands.

[cheater]

I agree that naming things is hard. I suggested "progress". Has anyone got a better idea? I think this bug should hang around for a bit, say 3 months, someone might come up with something better in the future. We don't have to decide right now. Hopefully the author will find one of the suggestions good!

[hoffoo]

@SiggyF by which distributions?

I think cv is a good name. One could easily name it whatever they want after building.

[Xfennec]

I'm looking silently at this ticket since the beginning, and for my part, very pleased with the current name (short, pronounceable [see-vee], and close to the commands it monitors [see-pee, …]). But as you said, feel free to suggest better names, I'm not strictly against a rename. (how do you rename a GitHub project, BTW ? :)

[cheater]

You can probably fork to a new repo and ask github to redirect from the old one to the new one.

[Kwpolska]

no need to, there is a rename option in the admin panel.

[kapouer]

the problem with a name like cv is that there (was|will) be a conflict with some other package, because it is too generic a name. @SiggyF mentioned cdargs (but i couldn't find a binary named cv in there), there is also 'radiance' in ubuntu (which is outdated). In the end, distributions like debian or fedora will have to rename the binary to something else. It is certain that it is better renamed by you than by distributors...

[SiggyF]

The cv is not a binary in cdargs but an alias/function. In cdargs installed through macports it is loaded by /opt/local/etc/profile.d/cdargs-bash.sh. It is defined as alias cv='cdb' where cdb is a bash function which eventually calls the binary cdargs.
I think the result would be that if you'd install cv as cv and then install cdargs, the cv binary would be masked by the alias cv.

[jvonmitchell]

I toss in a penny for "progress." It's pretty intuitive. Nice job on coding the thing. We've needed this for awhile.

[cdluminate]

@kapouer You are right.
I'm packaging cv for debian, and now we are facing the name issue.

https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=785426

[Xfennec]

I think i'll change the project name to "progress". Any issue with a specific Linux distribution ?

[kapouer]

Not exactly, but progress is having the same problem: it is too generic a name.
Other software could claim the same name with more legitimacy.
Here are suggestions to improve name unicity:

• psgress
• pgress
• ogress
• psio
  and so on.

[cheater]

I disagree, please don't come up with convoluted names for a command one uses once in a blue moon. You need tobe able to remember it and trying to figure out how exactly it has been mutilated will be frustrating. If "progress" were so hot it'd have been taken already. If something better comes in the future it can still supercede this program taking away its name.

[kapouer]

Ha sorry, once again i feel like i'm not at ease explaining that simple problem.
Programs having a generic name will conflict with other programs, eventually. The more common is the name, the sooner it will be. progress is quite popular as a common name:
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wiktionary:Frequency_lists/PG/2006/04/1-10000
It also refers to an abstract notion, and all the more a notion that is often invoked in software etc etc...

[BestPig]

It's better with a short name, I prefer to use an acronyme.
What about gpv that means Generic Progress Viewer

cv actually works on non-coreutils program ;).

I already checked on debian/ubuntu and gpv is not used.

[cheater]

"progress" is not being used, being OCD about holding a chance open someone else might perhaps by chance want to use it in ten years can be done elsewhere than here, please. Your frequency list obviously does not apply here, the top 21 are not names of executable programs. Do not try to give your position weight by coming up with unrelated data thinking no one will question it. It's arrogant of you to say you are "explaining" a "simple problem" as if the others /just don't get it/ (those morons). Don't worry, they do, your argument just isn't a very good one.

gpv and other acronyms will be difficult or impossible to memorize. This is not a tool most will use daily, which is necessary to memorize a made-up word like that. That's why even programming languages only ever use full words for their keywords - and the programmer repeats those dozens of times a day.

Great to know this tool also works on non-coreutils programs. I forgot all about that.

[BestPig]

I disagree, command must keep a short name.
If people have problem to remember acronyms, they are always able to create an alias in the shell config to a more fitting name. Personally a cannot remember an acronyme that has no meaning, but in the case of gpv it means Generic Progress Viewer and I think it can be memorised easily because it totally fit the use of this tool.

I think progress is too long, it's not practical to use, why all commands on linux, windows, osx are acronyme ? (cp, mv, ls, dd and a lot more), just because we are too lazy to type the full one ;) and it clearly faster to type.
progress is a too generic name it means everything and nothing.

Others proposition:
gpm General / Generic Program / Progress / Process Monitor
or just pm

[cheater]

I see your point but bear in mind this acronym means something /to you/. Presented with it.others.will not recognize it.

"progress" is just one char more to type than "gpm" or "gpv".

[BestPig]

I didn't want to say the acronyme means something to me, but the meaning of the acronyme means something to me, and I hope it's the case for all.
And If I can get out of my memory Generic Progress Viewer, I'm able to extract the acronym ;)

Just one char more ???
Let's do some mathematics :D

len('progress') => 8
len('gpm' || 'gpv') => 3
8 - 3 = 5

I didn't say I'm right or you are wrong, I just expose my opinion here, and I hope more people will do the same and we will see which option is more profitable for most peoples.

[cheater]

Try gpv vs prog :)

[cheater]

Oh, github broke my comment.

Try gpv(space) vs prog(tab). There.

[cdluminate]

Well, name "gpm" is already taken as "General Purpose Mouse interface".
It enables user to use mouse in tty.

[alexschomb]

I'd like to add that a too generic name like "progress" has issues with finding information about it online. Search for "progress linux command" in a search-engine and you'll find dozens of information to different topics (currently 31.1m Google results). On the other hand you're more likely to find the right results for "prg linux command" (currently 510k Google results) or similar. Generality of the name can make diffusion of the product harder.

[scottchiefbaker]

I agree with @alexschomb that it should be somewhat unique for searchability sake. For what it's worth my vote is psio

[cheater]

Hi,
I don't remember what commands they were, but I remember being surprised that a couple commands I had to google for that were common names did actually produce good hits. I searched for something like "bash etc". An example is "top" for one. I guess google cares more about the ngram much more than individual search results, and adding "bash" or "linux" creates very focused ngrams. You will not find anything about "progress linux command" because there is no such command. But once the packages start rolling in, once the github repos show up, SO questions start coming, and blog posts get written I assume things will be found. Just a released package generates umpteens of pages from distros which google understands have to do with "linux" and "bash". It knows how to index github quite well, I assume they have specialized the crawler for gh like they do for many other sites.

psio should logically display information about file input and output for all processes as specified. This command sorta fits this idea. But it also will make people assume compatibility with ps command line syntax - not sure if that can come. I guess it should probably also provide different columns to display other IO information - the amount of open files, (net) sockets, disk io, net io, totals transfered, etc (not all of those are easy).

If @Xfennec is happy for the project to go in this direction (which means a lot of work from him) then I say psio is a good name.

[cheater]

Err, i mean i searched for "bash (command) etc". I hate github on mobiles :(

[Hunter-Github]

Thanks to @Xfennec for the utility, and please don't change the name. Whatever short name you choose will likely conflict with someone else's utility, and longer names are a pain to type/remember.

[niko-dunixi]

I'm perfectly fine with cv, but if there is a change I also vote for psio.

[qaisjp]

psio looks like a nice name... does it stand for progress input output?

[Xfennec]

I share @cheater's idea that psio does not fit perfectly the actual role of the tool, cv is about command progression, not I/O monitoring. But the more we talk about it, the more I'm getting confused about all this rename-thing :)

Another thing is that I'm not ready to change the name of the whole project, it's too late. For instance, the GitHub URL is already spread around, some people know me as the "cv guy", etc. So my current idea is that the name cv is OK to me, but I must provide a way to allow packagers to deal with name conflicts.

This can be done by providing a way to choose the binary's name at compile time, for instance using a variable in the Makefile with a default "alternate name". Most packagers will then probably use this alternate name. In some way, it the case with tools like nc / netcat.

Is this idea silly ?

[cheater]

It's silly because of this:
https://github.com/blog/1508-repository-redirects-are-here

but even if repository redirects weren't available, it would still be a bad idea. The time from the creation of github.com/Xfennec/cv until now is insignificant in comparison to the whole lifetime of a project such as this. At some point it will be less than 1% of the project's lifetime, and a very insignificant 1% at that. Do not burden the other 99% with issues, history, additional complexity just for the sake of people who are used to how things were during that 1%. That's a very bad idea.

Packagers will find their way around github.

[qaisjp]

Yeah, it has been a year. And whilst I support @Xfennec's points - I also support @cheater's latest point. What does cv stand for anyway?

[LongDono]

Whatever it's called, renaming it so it's not conflicting with other packages will allow users like me to install it on Debian/Ubuntu using the packaging repository instead of seeing this when wanting to quickly install and use it after searching for "cp progress" and being told about this cool tool:

user@ubuntuserver:~$ cv
The program 'cv' is currently not installed. You can install it by typing:
sudo apt-get install radiance

I almost installed that before checking to see that Radiance is not the package I want, because the name conflicts. That is why the name must be changed, it conflicts with at least one other package, and if CV as a acronym doesn't even make sense, doesn't the name change makes sense anyway?

Pick another name such cvp or cvprogress if you are really attached to cv (both names are available). I understand it's annoying to be asked to change the project name but changing it will let the tool get the exposure it should, on all distributions. 👍

[Xfennec]

Finally renamed the project progress. Thanks to all of you.

[alexschomb]

I like it. Especially that we can run "watch progress ..." now. very intuitive! 👍

[cheater]

Thank you everyone.

[kapouer]

There is progress with "progress", but it's still too generic !
It's typically doomed to be almost impossible to find on a search engine.
Anyway it's not already taken by another binary in debian:
https://packages.debian.org/search?mode=path&suite=jessie&section=all&arch=any&searchon=contents&keywords=progress
which is good enough for debian.

[cheater]

A year from now I het it will be one of the top hits for "progress bash command".

[cdluminate]

@Xfennec Thank you !
I'm now re-packaging this program.

[florianl]

@Xfennec do you plan to release a new version for a clean start for progress?

[cheater]

@florianl and everyone else this is not the place for further discussion. This is not a forum. Please leave this bug report alone.

[abraithwaite]

Ironically, the reason why I remembered the name of this program was because of it's odd name. Now that it's progress I thought I was going insane not being able to find it again in my starred repos.

Perhaps put "(previously cv)" or something similar in the description?

[qaisjp]

Someone please lock this...