When did the pg command get removed?

[Snowhog]

Currently booted into my VM of 18.04. Was in a konsole and reviewing files. Tried to view a text file using the pg command. To my surprise the response was:

pg: command not found

Whaaaa!? I know I've used pg in prior versions of Kubuntu, so when was the pg command removed from Bash (or would it be the kernel)?

[mparillo]

Thanks for the trip down memory lane. I have been using more so long I forgot about pg.

[jglen490]

The pg command is on my 16.04LTS. According to the man page, it's found in the util-linux package. dpkg says the package is installed, and I'm pretty sure I've not done anything to install that.

[Snowhog]

The pg command is on my 16.04LTS. According to the man page, it's found in the util-linux package. dpkg says the package is installed, and I'm pretty sure I've not done anything to install that.

util-linux is installed here, but as the pg command doesn't exist here, it isn't provided by that package.

Added:
Well this is interesting:

http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man1/pg.1.html

Down the page, under Availability, it states:

The pg command is part of the util-linux package and is available
from https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux/.

Granted, the page is 'old' -- July 2014.

[acheron]

https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source....29.2-2ubuntu1

util-linux (2.29.2-2) unstable; urgency=medium

"The big post-release cleanup."

[ Andreas Henriksson ]
* Add DEP12 upstream metadata (Closes: #852731)
* Revert "Add configure flag to make libmount skip /etc/mtab"
* Drop explicit --disable-silent-rules configure flag
* Stop shipping the deprecated 'pg' utility
* Revert "Explicitly (re)enable deprecated pg utility"
* Stop shipping deprecated 'tunelp' utility
* Stop shipping the deprecated 'line' utility
* Drop explicitly passing CC for cross-building
* Use configure flags to disable utils shipped by bsdmainutils
* Revert "Attempt to work around debootstrap problems for hwclock.sh"
* Drop no longer needed lintian overrides for dropped workaround
* Drop obsolete fdisk reclaim on PPC
* Revert "Rename libuuid user to uuidd in libuuidd1 postinst as well"
* Revert "libuuid1: add passwd dependency for user migration"
* Drop obsolete uuid-runtime user/group migration code
* Remove 'pg' from being a pager alternative
* Stop shipping deprecated tailf utility
* Mention tailf removal in util-linux.NEWS

[ Christian Hofstaedtler ]
* Fix debhelper -s deprecation warning (Closes: #852228)

[jglen490]

O.K., util-linux is version 2.27.1-6 on 16.04LTS - at least on mine. So it hasn't been deprecated yet in my time continuum!

I've never used pg, more - yes, less - yep, cat - of course. Just curious after Snowhog's comment.

[Snowhog]

Thank you acheron.

It appears that what you cited is 'Ubuntucentric'? On https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/uti...l-linux/v2.29/, there isn't a v2.29.2-2 directory, and reviewing their ReleaseNotes, I find no mention of pg being removed.

[acheron]

Thank you acheron.

It appears that what you cited is 'Ubuntucentric'?

Nope.

https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/uti...9-ReleaseNotes

pg: - stop building the command by default [Sami Kerola]

and the corresponding commit:

https://github.com/karelzak/util-lin...d134a64bbc914a

So the decision from debian is to just follow that change in upstream default, and not build it.

[GreyGeek]

Even "more" should be depreciated because "less" is better.

[Snowhog]

Even "more" should be depreciated because "less" is better.

Oh you aren't saying, are you, that "less" is "more"!?

[Snowhog]

Nope.

https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/uti...9-ReleaseNotes



and the corresponding commit:

https://github.com/karelzak/util-lin...d134a64bbc914a

So the decision from debian is to just follow that change in upstream default, and not build it.

Why then, does kernel.org not reflect this change? Curious.

[GreyGeek]

Oh you aren't saying, are you, that "less" is "more"!?

No, "less" is more than "more"

[acheron]

Why then, does kernel.org not reflect this change? Curious.

It does.

It is in the release notes, as I linked to.

and the code in https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/uti...ux-2.29.tar.xz

shows in configure.ac

AC_ARG_ENABLE([pg],
AS_HELP_STRING([--enable-pg], [build pg]),
[], [UL_DEFAULT_ENABLE([pg], [[B]no[/B]])]
)

i.e. do not enable build of pg command by default, unless 'enable-pg is set'

as opposed to previous default, which was to build it by default, unless '--disable-pg' is set.

[Snowhog]

Doh!

Looked again and yup, the pg comment is there. Didn't see it when I first looked.

[jlittle]

Back in the days of Unix, more was BSD and pg was AT&T System V. People liked more better, the space bar is bigger than the enter keys, so most System V derived Unixes had more too (among a bunch of BSD utilities). But some didn't out of the box, a nuisance. Less was always open source, IIRC it existed before Linux, so early distros included less as the more replacement.

Regards, John Little