Re: Bug#9290: addressbook and efax-08a-3 both contain /usr/bin/fax
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On Fri, 9 May 1997, Marek Michalkiewicz wrote:
> Hakan Ardo:
> > On Fri, 2 May 1997, Dirk Eddelbuettel wrote:
> > > Marek> Renaming is probably the most reasonable fix. Rename the files in
> > > Marek> the package that has fewer users...
> > >
> > > I'm pretty much against that. Efax has been maintained by me since Sep 1995,
> > > and I have really no intention of annoying the users of the package by
> > > breaking usuability like this.
>
> How about renaming /usr/bin/fax in addressbook then?
That maybe is the best solution after all. "faxnr" for the addressbook
package would be fine for me. But this is a more general problem, and I'll
say we should find a more general solution for it and place it in the
policy manual. Se below for a sugestion.
>
> > > Marek> Alternatively, do what the mh package does (put all binaries in
> > > Marek> their own directory, which must be added by users to their PATH).
> > >
> > > Not very nice either.
>
> The FHS draft suggests /opt/<package>/bin - how about that? Now users
> can add the bin directories from packages they use to their PATH.
Oh? Where can I find this FHS?
>
> > Yet another way could be to rename all the fax binaries to fax.<dpkg-name>
> > or something and provide a symblock link from fax to one of them (user
> > configurable).
> >
> > For example could the postins script check if the link excits. If not
> > create it for the current package. Otherwise ask the user if he want it
> > changed.
>
> This is done for the various versions of vi (elvis, nvi, vim). This
> makes sense because all these binaries have similar functionality
> ("vi"-like editor). But the "fax" command does something completely
> different in the addressbook and efax packages. Imagine the resulting
> confusion on a multi-user system (some users want to use the "fax"
> command from efax, and others from addressbook).
True, it would be preferable if the selection where done at the user level
instead of at the administrator level.
>
> This problem is more general - as more packages are added, there will
> be more such namespace conflicts. The use of /opt for anything that
> is not the "core system" looks like a good idea to me. Other UN*X
Well, there is currently a little less than 1000 debian packages availible
among which about 50 is in the Base section, and having 900
/opt/<package>/bin in my path does not seem like a smoot solution. Besides
there will arise problems when you are installing new packages and needs
to update the path of every user...
A better solution would be to only use a combination of the two. Keep efax
the way it is as we consider it the most used package. Then we could
rename the addressbook executable /usr/bin/fax to
/usr/bin/fax-addressbook, and let that package also contain a symbolic
link /opt/addressbook/bin/fax pointing to /usr/bin/fax-addressbook.
This way users wanting something other than the default efax command could
add /opt/addressbook/bin/ to there paths before /usr/bin, or they could
use fax-addressbook instead to make there own aliases or for a onetime
access.
- ---------------------------------------------------------------
Name: Hakan Ardo
E-Mail: hakan@debian.org
WWW: http://www.ub2.lu.se/~hakan/sig.html
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Interests: WWW, Programming, 3D graphics
Thought for the day: As long as one understands, the
spelling does not matter :-)
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