Problem
There is the tag .bash-profile, note the leading dot. Currently it has no synonyms, so the "canonical" tag is naturally with the dot. And there is also bashrc with .bashrc as its synonym, but the "canonical" tag is the one without a dot.
For consistency I'd like the "canonical" tags to be either both with dots or both without dots. The other forms can be synonyms then.
Research
Pro dots in "canonical" tags:
- The files used by Bash are named
.bash_profile
and.bashrc
, with dots.
Against dots in "canonical" tags:
- My list of watched tags contains
bash*
and this covers many tags related to pure Bash, including bashrc, but not .bash-profile. I have added.bash*
to the list and currently this entry covers only .bash-profile. The fact.bash*
does not match .bashrc makes me believe that only the "canonical" tags count. So if we make the tags with dots "canonical" then I will still needbash*
and.bash*
(I know I can use*bash*
, but suppose I don't want git-bash to match). But if we create bash-profile and make the tags without dots "canonical" thenbash*
will be enough to cover all the tags related to pure Bash. Quite elegant.
I note (here) that .bashrc as a synonym of bashrc is not particularly useful. It has been renamed to bashrc 11 times, while the total number of questions tagged bashrc is 289. .bash-profile works well without any synonym and bash-profile does not exist (yet). So maybe we don't really need synonyms for these tags in the first place.
OTOH when one creates a question (or browses tags here) and types bash-profile
, the site suggests .bash-profile; but e.g. for .linux
it does not suggest linux. Therefore I conclude that:
- .bash-profile and .bashrc probably can work reasonably well without synonyms (the right tag will be suggested even if a user types without the dot), so if we opt for "canonical" tags with dots then maybe we won't need the tags without dots as synonyms; the fact .bash-profile works well without bash-profile supports this;
- but bash-profile and bashrc probably cannot work reasonably well without synonyms (the right tag won't be suggested if a user types with the dot), so if we opt for "canonical" tags without dots then we should keep the tags with dots as synonyms.
My preference
Personally I'm against dots in "canonical" tags. I would like bash-profile and bashrc to be "canonical" (the former would have to be created), .bash-profile and .bashrc to be respective synonyms. But even if we decide the "canonical" tags should be both with dots, it will still be more consistent than the current situation.
How other sites do it
On Unix & Linux SE
bash-profile
andbashrc
are synonyms forbash
;.bash-profile
and.bashrc
do not exist..bash-logout
is standalone (it's not a synonym forbash
) butbash-logout
does not exist.Ask Ubuntu has
bashrc
, no.bashrc
..bash-history
is a synonym forbash
, but there is nobash-history
.On Stack Overflow
.bash-profile
,.bashrc
andbashrc
are synonyms forbash
;bash-profile
does not exist though.
It seems none of these sites has managed to create (or maintain) a fully consistent policy regarding these tags. So maybe inconsistencies are not that bad; maybe the inconsistency I'm asking about is not that bad; maybe we should just let our tags be.
Questions
- Should we remove the inconsistency between .bash-profile (dot) and bashrc (no dot)?
- If so, which form (with or without a dot) should be "canonical" for both tags?
- Do we need synonyms for them? For both of them?