Goal: Increased Modularity?

[Les Mikesell]

Jeff Spaleta wrote:
> On 9/4/07, Les Mikesell <lesmikesell at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Has anyone considered a system that 'makes sense' for multiuser
>> operation where different users want different alternative targets at
>> once - or the same user wants alternative JVMs for different
>> applications at the same time?
> 
> Are you suggesting that the alternatives system, in association with
> shell PATH variables isn't adequate enough for a user who knows enough
> about things such as sendmail alternatives to reconfigure to their
> hearts content? 

MTA's are sort-of system wide by nature, since only one thing can be 
listening on the inbound port.  I'm more concerned with different JVMs 
since it is fairly likely that some users/applications won't be 
satisfied with included version(s), and some apps that you might want to 
run at the same time require different JVM versions.

> I'm pretty sure alternatives allows for per-user
> configurations, into per-user defined paths for executables and
> manpages and what not.

I haven't found documentation for the alternatives system that explains 
it at that level, and I haven't had a strong enough stomach to wade my 
way through the multi-level symlink morass to figure out what the right 
values for JAVA_HOME and PATH should be to execute any specific JVM 
version.  Is it really designed to handle that?

-- 
   Les Mikesell
    lesmikesell at gmail.com