Re: Experiment: poll on "switching to vim-tiny for standard vi?"
On 06-Jan-06, 08:28 (CST), paddy <paddy@panici.net> wrote:
> On Fri, Jan 06, 2006 at 07:43:07AM -0600, Steve Greenland wrote:
> > Then the whole update-alternatives priority system is made pointless.
>
> s/pointless/better/
How? If you provide the ability to determine alternative selection based
on package priority (Important/Standard/Optional/Extra), why do you need
alternative priorities (numerical, set in in package maintainer scripts,
locally overridable)?
(The fact that we are using the word "priority" to mean two different
things is perhaps confusing, which is why I've been trying to
distinguish "package priority" and "alternative priority".)
> > Part of our job as maintainers and distributors is to make choices, so
> > that *most* of our users don't have to. Then we generally provide a
> > way to override those choices, for the remainder, who disagree with a
> > particular choice or have a particular situation that is not covered by
> > our choice.
>
> and this would be just such an override, surely ?
We *already* have an override: it's called 'update-alternative'. Why do
we need two?
> > Remember that people in class C are probably in class C *only* for one
> > particular alternative, and are perfectly happy with the all the others.
>
> okay so this is "noone ever wants to do that"
Sigh. No, it's "most of the time, for most people, our current system
defaults in an appropriate manner, and for those rare occasions when it
doesn't, we have the tool to override."
> I'm sorry to keep asking so many dumb questions, but would such a facility
> make things any harder for maintainers ? (I have no trouble imagining that
> it might, but I'm not familiar with the details)
It makes it harder for maintainers, and it makes it harder for users,
because there would then be two completely different ways of overriding
default alternative priorities. Which would be dominant? Which is
preferred? How do you test all the interactions?
> As I've tried very hard to indicate, I'm not clear on what the implications
> would be, but I was kinda hoping that it might be a no-brainer, rather
> than a design decision. I'm still no clearer on that :(
We have a straightforward system that provides a) reasonable default
behaviour, and b) a standard way to override the default. I don't see
the point in complicating that to provide a solution to a "problem"
that has been invented just for this thread, and has *no* outstanding
wishlist bug reports.
Steve
--
Steve Greenland
The irony is that Bill Gates claims to be making a stable operating
system and Linus Torvalds claims to be trying to take over the
world. -- seen on the net
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