emacs and /etc/alternatives

[Chip Coldwell]

On Fri, 9 Mar 2007, Jesse Keating wrote:

> On Friday 09 March 2007 12:56:01 Chip Coldwell wrote:
> > 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.
> 
> Forgive my ignorance, but isn't alternatives a sitewide thing, where 
> preference for emacs vs emacs-nox might be a per user thing?

How is that different from a shell script in /usr/bin/emacs that chooses a 
sitewide default?

If there is

/usr/bin/emacs -> /etc/alternatives/emacs
/etc/alternatives/emacs -> /usr/bin/emacs-22.0.95

and

/usr/bin/xemacs
/usr/bin/emacs-22.0.95-nox

The user can still "alias emacs=xemacs" or put a wrapper script in 
$HOME/bin.  Functionally, the /etc/alternatives is only setting a 
systemwide default, precisely the same thing the systemwide wrapper script 
does, but does it in a standardized way instead of making up our own 
per-package standard.

Chip

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