/usr/bin/rmic -- why?

[James Wilkinson]

Joel wrote:
> What are jar, rmiregistry, and who knows what else doing in /usr/bin ?

$ ls -l /usr/bin/rmiregistry /usr/bin/jar
lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root 21 Feb 15 20:37 /usr/bin/jar -> /etc/alternatives/jar
lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root 29 Feb 15 20:37 /usr/bin/rmiregistry -> /etc/alternatives/rmiregistry

They're symlinks into the Red Hat alternatives scheme.
man 8 alternatives says:

       It is possible for several programs fulfilling  the  same  or  similar
       functions  to  be  installed on a single system at the same time.  For
       example, many systems have several text  editors  installed  at  once.
       This  gives  choice  to  the users of a system, allowing each to use a
       different editor, if desired, but makes it difficult for a program  to
       make a good choice of editor to invoke if the user has not specified a
       particular preference.

       The alternatives system aims to solve this problem.  A generic name in
       the  filesystem is shared by all files providing interchangeable func-
       tionality.  The  alternatives  system  and  the  system  administrator
       together  determine  which  actual  file is referenced by this generic
       name.  For example, if the text editors  ed(1)  and  nvi(1)  are  both
       installed  on  the  system,  the  alternatives  system  will cause the
       generic name /usr/bin/editor to refer to /usr/bin/nvi by default.  The
       system  administrator  can  override  this  and  cause  it to refer to
       /usr/bin/ed instead, and the alternatives system will not  alter  this
       setting until explicitly requested to do so.

So they allow you to have a number of Java virtual machines, and easily
swap from one to another.

James.

-- 
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