English Wikipedia @ Freddythechick:Articles for deletion/Size (Unix)

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was delete. After discounting Schily's opinion, which does not address the concerns raised in the discussion, consensus is that this software function is not notable. Whether to redirect to List of Unix commands is a separate matter; recreating the entry there should not require a merger. Sandstein 08:57, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

Size (Unix)

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Manual for a trivial Unix command. QVVERTYVS (hm?) 16:09, 29 January 2016 (UTC)

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Computing-related deletion discussions. QVVERTYVS (hm?) 16:09, 29 January 2016 (UTC)

Keep WP:NOTMANUAL is stylistic guidance which is addressed by editing not deletion. Andrew D. (talk) 17:54, 29 January 2016 (UTC)

@Andrew Davidson: it's part of WP:NOT, a policy regarding what material is appropriate for inclusion. If you think you can write an article about this program that is not a manual, feel free to do so. QVVERTYVS (hm?) 13:02, 30 January 2016 (UTC)

The relevant section states:
Instruction manuals. While Wikipedia has descriptions of people, places and things, an article should not read like a "how-to" style owner's manual, cookbook, advice column (legal, medical or otherwise) or suggestion box. This includes tutorials, instruction manuals, game guides, and recipes. Describing to the reader how people or things use or do something is encyclopedic; instructing the reader in the imperative mood about how to use or do something is not.

This is stylistic guidance, not a prohibition on writing about topics of this kind. For food topics, we cover a dish such as an omelette in a descriptive way rather than providing step-by-step instructions or a recipe. The same goes for computing topics. My !vote stands. Andrew D. (talk) 13:42, 30 January 2016 (UTC)

Keep the actual quality of an article is irrelevant when it covers an important command such as size. Schily (talk) 15:26, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

Comment to those criticizing my deletion rationale, keep in mind that your !vote need not depend on it, and WP:GNG is also not established for this program. QVVERTYVS (hm?) 15:33, 1 February 2016 (UTC)
delete Unlike the recent AfD for test (Unix), I can't see any evidence for notability beyond the basics of WP:MANUAL. Andy Dingley (talk) 19:32, 3 February 2016 (UTC)
Delete I agree with Andy Dingley. This command is lacking in notability. It is rarely used, and what it does is not especially important or interesting. SJK (talk) 10:46, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

Keep Here are some sources about the subject:
1. Dikian, Jack (December 1989). "Unix Design and Tuning Issues". AUUG. Vol. 10. AUUG. p. 17. Retrieved 2016-02-06.
  The article notes:
  The value returned via ps does not include the size of shared text. The UNIX "size" utility returns the size of text, data, and bss (uninitialized data) sections of a common object file. The text size returned by the size utility should be added to the number calculated via ps to give the total memory used.
2. Massa, Anthony J. (2003). Embedded Software Development with ECos. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice Hall. p. 303. ISBN 0130354732. Retrieved 2016-02-06.
  The book notes:
  One utility that can come in handy is the GNU size utility. The size utility is part of the GNU binary utilities. The size utility lists the sizes of the different sections and the total size of the object file. To get the size of our example application we run the command:
  $ is386-elf-size basic1.exe
  The output from the size utility is shown in Code Listing 12.5.
  In Code Listing 12.5, the section names, text, data, and bss, are shown on line 1. Also on line 1 is the total size of the basic.exe object file in decimal (dec) and hexadecimal (hex). The size values are listed under their respective sections on line 2. Adding up the text, data, and bss sections gives the total size of the file, 113,188 bytes, under the dec column, which equates to 1BA24 in hexadecimal, shown in the hex column.
3. Raghavan, P.; Lad, Amol; Neelakandan, Sriram (2005). Embedded Linux System Design and Development. Boca Raton, Florida: CRC Press. p. 50. ISBN 1420031619. Retrieved 2016-02-06.
  The book notes:
  size: The GNU size utility lists the section sizes and the total size for each of the object files in its argument list. By default, one line of output is generated for each object file or each module in an archive.
4. Allan, R.J.; Guest, M.F.; Simpson, A.D.; Henty, D.S.; Nicole, D., eds. (2012). High-Performance Computing. New York: Springer Science+Business Media. p. 123. ISBN 146154873X. Retrieved 2016-02-06.
  The book notes:
  It is often important to know how the memory requirements of a code vary with the problem parameters and the number of processors used, particularly when porting between machines with different configurations. It can be difficult to trace errors due to lack of memory so a priori knowledge of array requirements can be extremely useful. Tools such as the UNIX size (or mppsize on the T3D) which give information on the memory requirements of the executable file can be useful, although these only report statically allocated memory.
5. Robbins, Arnold (1999). UNIX in a Nutshell: A Desktop Quick Reference for System V Release 4 and Solaris 7. Sebastopol, California: O'Reilly Media. p. 151. ISBN 1565924274. Retrieved 2016-02-06.
  The book notes:
  /usr/ccs/bin/size [options] [objfile ...]
  Print the (decimal) number of bytes of each section of objfile. On many systems, if objfile is not specified, a.out is used. Solaris requires the objfile name.
  Options
  -f Print sizes, names, and total size for allocatable sections.
  -F Print sizes, permission flags, and total size for loadable segments.
  -n Print sizes for nonallocatable sections or for nonloadable segments.
  -o Print output in octal.
  -V Report the size program version number
  -x Print output in hexadecimal.
There is enough material about the subject to write an encyclopedic article that does not violate WP:NOTMANUAL and that describes the different components of the size command: its inputs and outputs. A description of the inputs could list the different options. A description of the outputs could explain the "returns the size of text, data, and bss (uninitialized data) sections of a common object file" in bytes in decimal form. Source #4 further notes that size "only report[s] statically allocated memory".
From WP:NOTMANUAL, "Describing to the reader how people or things use or do something is encyclopedic; instructing the reader in the imperative mood about how to use or do something is not."
Cunard (talk) 05:53, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Spartaz ^Humbug! 08:22, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

Delete. Yes, as usual, Cunard was able to dredge up many trivial mentions. However, there just isn't enough there to justify an article. What I would want to see is something like vi, which has background, history, and a clear description of why it's notable. I dispute that an article created from those sources would be encyclopedic and satisfy the requirements of WP:NOTMANUAL. Then again, we've been through this with enough AfDs by now that everyone probably already knows how I feel. If we can't create an article that doesn't violate policy, then we shouldn't have an article. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 16:23, 6 February 2016 (UTC)
Merge to List of Unix commands as there is no expansion opportunity except for information about its use; not specified in ISO/IEC 9945:2003 or POSIX; passing notice. Esquivalience ^t 00:20, 8 February 2016 (UTC)
Delete. There is nothing interesting about this command. Sure, there are books that include descriptions of it, but in the same way that a dictionary includes the word, size. A Google search for size returns About 5,180,000,000 results. That, also, proves nothing. Even the lead sentence of the article, size is a command line utility originally written for use with the Unix-like operating systems. shows a lack of understanding by the author; when size was originally written, there were no unix-like operating systems. There was unix. The next sentence goes on to say, It processes one or more ELF files, which is equally silly since size long predates ELF. I could see an interesting article being written about executable file formats, and what the various sections of the file are for, but all size does is take some numbers from the file header and dump them in human-readable form. -- RoySmith (talk) 02:17, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.