Re: Bug#2378: Gawk postinst script does not work correctly

[Ian Jackson <ian@chiark.chu.cam.ac.uk>]

Chris Fearnley writes ("Bug#2378: Gawk postinst script does not work correctly"):
...
> If you want to make gawk the default awk, edit
> /var/lib/dpkg/alternatives/awk (I think that's the path - not at a
> Debian system right now) and then run update-alternatives by hand (-h
> to get help).

Huh ?  No, don't do this.  Type:

 # cd /etc/alternatives
 # ln -sf /usr/bin/gawk awk

Simple enough ?  [1]

>   I've submitted a bug report (#1921) and patch to
> update-alternatives in an attempt to make it easier to perform this
> operation.  I believe that bug is still outstanding.

I think you must have been confused, or at least the reason I left
that bug outstanding was because there are some packages where the
sysadmin really has to choose which is the default (spelling
dictionaries, for example), and update-alternatives doesn't allow
that since it always operates without prompting.

Ian.

[1] Yes, this _will_ be preserved across upgrades and de- and
re-installations of mawk.  I don't remember whether it will survive
deinstalling gawk ...