Re: appropriate use of /etc/alternatives

[Richard Braakman <dark@xs4all.nl>]

On Sat, May 31, 2003 at 12:08:20PM -0400, Noah Meyerhans wrote:
> On Sat, May 31, 2003 at 02:00:41PM +0100, Mark Brown wrote:
> > The binary is going to have to be renamed - even if you use an
> > alternative there'll still be a renamed binary there.  
> 
> yes, but the user would only need to know in the even that they had both
> alternatives installed, which I don't see happening very often.

This means that the result of using "xplot" is unpredictable.
Something that worked yesterday can break tomorrow because the sysadmin
installed a new package.  That's not a good situation.

> > Would it be possible to massage the data format for one xplot into the
> > other or modify one to accept the input of the other in a compatibility
> > mode?
> 
> Possibly, but why create more work for the user?

I think it's _less_ work for the user if you can have one xplot program
which replaces both of the current ones.

Richard Braakman