Monique Y. Herman wrote:
On Thu, 09 Oct 2003 at 20:30 GMT, David Z Maze penned:"Monique Y. Herman" <spam@bounceswoosh.org> writes:I'd never heard of update-alternatives or /etc/alternatives until a few days ago on this list, and to be honest I'm still a little (a lot) foggy on what exactly it's used for. For instance, I have /etc/alternatives/vi and /etc/alternatives/editor ... what applications will use these values?nvi, vim, and elvis (all vi clones) will register alternatives for vi; these, plus emacs, xemacs, nano, etc. will be alternatives for editor.Yes, I understand that. What I don't understand is, what uses these registries? Does the system set $EDITOR to /etc/alternatives/editor under the cover? Will typing "kedit" suddenly get me vim? What apps respect alternatives instead of, say, $EDITOR or $PAGER, and how do I find this out? Or is this just a convenience that I can choose to use when setting up my own users? (Also seems weird to me that a bunch of pointers to executables would be stored in /etc, but maybe that's just me.)
I know that CVS uses the EDITOR (or /etc/alternatives/editor) pointer to let the user make log entries. So, if your "editor" is nano, when you commit changes, nano pops up and you type in your log entry, then when you exit it grabs the text and makes the log entry. Same goes for vim, emacs, whatever. I don't think it at all strange that the pointers to executables are in /etc. After all, it is a configuration setting (default apps for certain functions). -Roberto
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