emacs and /etc/alternatives

[Chip Coldwell]

On Fri, 9 Mar 2007, John Dennis wrote:

> 
> Here is the summary as I see it:

Good summary, thanks.

> and we don't want conflicts.
> 
> To get us to a situation where there can be two versions of emacs (a
> reasonable goal) we have the following choices:
> 
> * have a package which owns /usr/bin/emacs and install a script to start
> the preferred version. emacs and emacs-nox both require this package.
> 
> * use alternatives (yuck!), I don't think it's appropriate for this
> purpose and its just plain nasty, but it solves the file conflict
> problem.

I really don't understand the reaction alternatives is getting.  Is it 
really preferable to have every package create its own script, using its 
own environment variables and its own priorities, than to use a common 
infracstructure like alternatives?  At least once the SA has learned 
alternatives, he knows what to expect from the different packages that use 
it.

Chip

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