Re: Incoming directory status
On Fri, 10 May 1996, Rob Browning wrote:
> >>>>> "D" == David Engel <david@elo.ods.com> writes:
>
> D> giving every alternative package equal status. Whenever possible,
> D> we should try to standardize on one package and have the other
> D> packages deal with it accordingly. For example, in this case,
> D> xemacs can either depend on emacs to get etags,
>
> I don't think this is a good idea. One of the goals of the package
> system should be to maximize the ratio of things that you install that
> you want to things that you are forced to install that you don't want.
> Most people will probably want emacs or xemacs, but not both. Forcing
> the xemacs users to install emacs seems a bit excessive.
>
I agree. The way this was resolved for pine, lynx, et al, was to create
mime-support (oops sorry mime_support) to hold mime-types and mailcap.
This is not a specific problem between emacs and xemacs there are more
than a few packages that wish to use shared configuration files of this
type. We may need a more general package, like shared_config, that can
hold all of these types of files.
On the other hand, like /etc/passwd and /etc/modules, we may need to use a
more standardized modification proceedure, that verifies that the needs of
the particular package are satisfied by the contents of the particular
file. When that entry is not found in the file, the proceedure should
define a correct way to make the proper entry. Something along the lines
of the standard interface to inet.d.
Luck,
Dwarf
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