emacs and /etc/alternatives

[Matthew Miller]

On Fri, Mar 09, 2007 at 12:27:11PM -0500, Chip Coldwell wrote:
> blowing with the wind here.  My initial notion was to use the 
> /etc/alternatives infrastructure.  That's what Debian does, and it seems 
> like this is precisely the sort of thing that /etc/alternatives was meant 
> to handle: two alternative methods of providing the same (or nearly the 
> same) functionality.  We could even fold in xemacs.

Your point about xemacs is a very strong argument for not using
alternatives. That's *exactly* what it's not for.

> That met with strenous objections.

Right. :)

> Then I suggested having two packages that conflict with each other.
> That met with strenous objections.

Right, there's no really good reason to do that.

> Then I suggested dropping the emacs-nox package.
> That met with strenous objections.

But, not very convincing ones. :)

-- 
Matthew Miller           mattdm at mattdm.org          <http://mattdm.org/>
Boston University Linux      ------>              <http://linux.bu.edu/>