On 20/08/14 16:45, Les Mikesell wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 20, 2014 at 9:02 AM, Toralf Lund <toralf.lund@xxxxxxx> wrote:
>>>>>> I can confirm that. I have both installed. You can configure the default
>>>>>> using the 'alternatives' system.
>>>>> is it just me, or does anyone else think that 'alternatives' system is
>>>>> completely bogus?
>>>> I've always seen it as designed mostly for system services for which
>>>> there are several common implementations - like the SMTP server or the
>>>> printing system. Where I think it makes sense.
>>> But do you really need _two_ symlinks to get a default in your PATH?
>> I think the argument is that "configuration" commands shouldn't change
>> bin directories. Which is right in a way, but maybe this is one of the
>> cases where practicality should have been chosen over formal correctness.
> What is formally correct about putting executables in some obscure
> place under /var?
I'm not quite sure what you mean by that. For the alternatives setup I
have links on /usr/bin or whatever pointing to other links on
/etc/alternatives, which in turn point to the real files - where direct
links from /usr/bin would of course be simpler. Perhaps you were talking
about something else, or are the locations different on CentOS 7 (I'm
using version 6.)
What I was referring to is that I believe it's considered as incorrect
to put "dynamic" data on /usr these days. I'm not sure there is a
separate specification saying so, or if it's just taken to be implied by
the FHS (http://www.pathname.com/fhs/pub/fhs-2.3.html).
- T
>
>>>> It may also be useful to be able to set up a system-wide default for
>>>> user applications "with alternatives", but I suppose a user override
>>>> ought to be possible in that case.
>>>>
>>>>> what if I have one user that wants JDK6 and another that needs JDK7 ?
>>>> I guess the "preferred applications" system in the desktop is in a way
>>>> meant for such cases, but this of course comes across as incomplete, too.
>>>>
>>> The concept used for 'software collections' is a more realistic
>>> approach - but instead of hiding where things land and needing a tool
>>> to set up use, why not just tell people what to add to their own PATH
>>> and LD_LIBRARY path to get the version you want. That's almost
>>> certainly what the developers of every package where they need to have
>>> test versions does. So why treat the users like they would be too
>>> dumb for that?
>> That's a point.
>>
>> You could also easily develop "config" tools that would make that job
>> easier for "dumb" users - this might be more productive than maintaining
>> different solution that essentially have the same effect.
> Or you could just not pretend that users are dumb for choosing your
> product. And not hide the purpose, content, and functionality of PATH
> and LD_LIBRARY_PATH, things that every developer who needs to have a
> 'stable, trusted' version of an application along with today's build
> is going to understand and utilize. So it's probably not those
> developers that came up with the weird alternatives scheme - or at
> least decided to use it for applications that really need concurrent
> alternatives, not a site-wide default.
>
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