Re: LSB Spec 1.0 Criticism
Ethan Benson <erbenson@alaska.net> wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 04, 2001 at 10:38:14AM -0400, Jan Schaumann wrote:
> > sorry if this has been discussed before, but I really like Debian's way
> > of using /etc/alternatives as a place for variable symlinks. Also, as
> > far as I understand the FHS, "/usr/local/bin" should be the place where
> > to install binaries to anyway, not "/usr/bin", right?
>
> no, /usr/local is for sysadmin installed software, not packaged
> software. though i suppose proprietary crap falls into that catagory
> most of the time.
Oh, ok.
> > So I'd probably suggest a package to install as follows:
> >
> > /opt/package/
> > /opt/package/bin/
> > /opt/package/bin/executable
> > /opt/etc/packagerc
>
> good
>
> > /usr/local/bin/exectuable -> /etc/alternatives/executable
> > /etc/alternatives/executable -> /opt/package/bin/executable
>
> why? this isn't needed.
>
> better soltution is the /opt method above, and the following addition
> to /etc/profile:
>
> if [ -d /opt/bin ] ; then
> PATH="${PATH}:/opt/bin"
> fi
>
> or something like that.
The point of "/etc/alternatives" would be that if I install a different
version of some software, that I would only have to change the one
symlink in /etc/alternatives.
Say I use gcc-2.95 as my default compiler:
/usr/bin/gcc -> /etc/alternatives/gcc
/etc/alternatives -> /usr/local/bin/gcc-2.95/bin/gcc-2.95
(paths completely made up)
Now I want to install gcc-3.0 but keep gcc-2.95 around for a while. So
all I need to do is change "/etc/alternatives/gcc" to point to wherever
the gcc-3.0 executable is - yet I still can use "gcc" from my $PATH to
call it.
If I didn't use this structure, I would need to change the symlink from
/usr/bin/gcc to point somehwere else. Ok, granted, I still have only
one symlink, but somehow I'd rather not change stuff around in /usr/bin
and rather /etc/alternatives.
Am I making sense? Maybe not... Nevermind. :)
-Jan
--
Jan Schaumann
http://www.netmeister.org
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