Re: RFC: Policy 10.1 and appropriateness of package conflicts
[ CC debian-blends: the problem is how to make sure that when a
program is renamed because of a file conflict with another program,
its users still have a chance to use it out of the box.]
Le Fri, Aug 13, 2010 at 01:44:04PM -0700, Russ Allbery a écrit :
> Ian Jackson <ijackson@chiark.greenend.org.uk> writes:
>
> > I see. Couldn't you arrange to automatically update the default user
> > PATH ? (After asking a suitable debconf question.) That would avoid
> > having to Conflict with other packages and would make it possible for
> > users of this fsl nonsense and users of different nonsense to coexist on
> > the same machine :-).
>
> Debian doesn't offer a way to update the default user PATH. It's very
> difficult to do as long as the PATH is set in shell configuration rather
> than via other means, and even if it's set via other means, you have the
> problem that it's owned by configuration files of other packages.
Dear all
at least for scientific packages, this is a frequently happening problem. But
Debian may have a solution, since it provides “Blends” distributions that are
focused at a specific user groups, which can be assumed to have the same
preferences.
How about something among these lines:
- A Blend provides a directory /usr/share/<name-of-the-blend>.
- Packages can add symlinks there on a voluntary basis.
- The blend installs a script in /etc/profile.d, that adds the
symlinks directory to the PATH of the users that are in the
Blend's unix group.
This requires coordination between package maintainers and blends maintainers,
but in the case we are discussing, they are often the same persons or part of
the same team.
This will not work in all cases, but I think that the focus here is ‘out of the
box’ usage, by persons who usually do not modify their PATH.
Have a nice day,
--
Charles Plessy
Debian Med packaging team,
http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-med
Tsurumi, Kanagawa, Japan
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