On Fri, 2006-10-06 at 08:45 -0400, Edwin Olson wrote: > Fedora has shipped "alternatives" for a while now, but I still don't get it. > > Why is "alternatives" better than setting your PATH appropriately? Why > should "alternatives" override your path? The two big reasons I'm familiar with are: 1) not everything respects your path (e.g. may be executed outside the context of your login). 2) it's a convenient way to manage a group of "pointers" which all must be updated in lock-step (e.g. getting any one of many links wrong can be disastrous). The context I'm most familiar with is the use of alternatives for modifying your MTA (e.g. postfix vs. sendmail) for which both above points are critical. Whether alternatives is appropriate for some other scenario/context could be debated but alternatives does serve a useful purpose. -- John Dennis <jdennis@xxxxxxxxxx> -- fedora-test-list mailing list fedora-test-list@xxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-test-list