Can people please stop using 'lockfile' for things that aren't lockfiles?
Particularly if you're storing important data using the name of a file type that, for the last few decades, has been something any Linux or Unix user can delete without significant consequence.
I have the same problem with "tree shaking". Granted it's not a bastardization of an established term, but it's a reinvention and confounding of terms we already had.
I guess the one thing to take away from this is that js tool authors and c tool authors don't talk to each other enough.
As a curiosity, and I say this as someone who has a significant C background, what would you call a similar concept in C? I know that it happens (having been burned by missing symbol errors due to incorrect link ordering), but I don't actually know what it's called.
Typically it would be called dead-code elimination. The creator of rollup who popularized the term tree-shaking disagrees that they are the same, but his argument is not super compelling (not that it really matters either way).
Particularly if you're storing important data using the name of a file type that, for the last few decades, has been something any Linux or Unix user can delete without significant consequence.