Bug#155849: dpkg: Programs misbehave when called through alternatives. Proposal to change symlinks to scripts
On Wed, 2002-08-07 at 18:46, Carlos Sousa wrote:
> If /etc/alternatives/editor points to /usr/bin/jemacs, which is a link
> to /usr/bin/joe meant to call joe with emacs key bindings, then whenever
> "editor" is invoked joe will come up with its default behaviour (no emacs
> key bindings).
Programs just shouldn't rely on their executed name to determine their
behavior. It's not portable, and can cause problems in other situations
(as you have shown). There's a reason it's against the GNU Coding
Standards.
I suggest you reassign this bug to joe, and have its authors turn
"jemacs" into a shell script or small C program which just execs joe
with an argument like --emacs-keybindings. That will always work.
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