emacs and /etc/alternatives

[Chip Coldwell]

On Thu, 8 Mar 2007, Jesse Keating wrote:

> On Thursday 08 March 2007 16:59:36 Chip Coldwell wrote:
> > Right now: if you install emacs it drags in gtk/gdk/atk/etc, but you
> > can invoke it with "-nw" and it will run in a terminal.  Or you can
> > install emacs-nox which does not drag in gtk/gdk/atk/etc, and it will
> > only run in a terminal.
> >
> > So is your recommendation rename emacs to emacs-gnome, rename
> > emacs-nox to emacs, and add a "-x" command line switch to emacs
> > (renamed from emacs-nox) whose purpose is to emit an error message?
> 
> my recommendation is to find a way to consolidate the two distinct binaries 
> into one that can optionally load gui libraries if A) they exist and B) an 
> option was passed to load them.

The GUI libraries will be required by the dynamic linker in order to run 
the binary if the GUI was enabled at compile time.  IOW, there are two 
completely different binaries.  I would be nice if it worked the way you 
describe, but I think it would be many man-years of work to implement all 
the changes in emacs required.

> Or we just throw out the non-gui emacs and only ship the one that can do both, 
> to be damned with pulling in a gtk stack.  I don't want conflicts and I don't 
> want to involve alternatives if at all possible.

Well, then I guess my preference would be to eliminate the -nox subpackage 
from Fedora.  We can continue to support it for RHEL, since there will be 
headless servers, etc, that don't need all the GUI infrastructure.

FWIW, on Debian, there are

/etc/alternatives/vi
/etc/alternatives/emacs

etc, etc.  So Debian uses the alternatives mechanism heavily in this 
respect.  I'm not suggesting that Fedora should emulate this, just making 
the observation.

Chip

-- 
Charles M. "Chip" Coldwell
Senior Software Engineer
Red Hat, Inc
978-392-2426