emacs and /etc/alternatives

[Chip Coldwell]

On Fri, 9 Mar 2007, Matthew Miller wrote:

> 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.

I don't see your point.  With /etc/alternatives, you could have both GNU 
emacs (X and no-X versions) and Lucid/XEmacs installed simultaneously and 
each user could run the one he prefers.  Those who have no preference 
would get the systemwide default set in /etc/alternatives.

Chip

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