[djmdjm]

scp only appears to have simplicity because it outsources large parts of its functionality (e.g. glob expansion) to the destination host's shell. scp/rcp was a great protocol for 1981 (yes, that's when it was introduced) but not for 2019

[tgragnato]

And this leads to the question.. OpenBSD is famous for removing unwanted or outdated code. What makes scp a special case? Is it too used to be deprecated and removed?

[djmdjm]

yeah, pretty much. If someone implemented scp's command-line with sftp underneath then we could start the (slow) deprecation process.

[throwaway2048]

its part of the ssh protocol, getting rid of cruft from network protocols is almost completely impossible unfortunately, because its going to destroy many people's workflows, in a way that they can not fix, guaranteed.

Yes, we all know about xkcd, no need to link guys.

[djmdjm]

scp isn't part of the ssh protocol. It's a command that runs over it.

[Operyl]

Out of curiosity, since I wasn't sure which one in particular throwaway2048 was talking about, here are my closest guesses:

927 - Standards - https://xkcd.com/927/

1127 - Workflow - https://xkcd.com/1172/

1323 - Protocol - https://xkcd.com/1323/