From owner-freebsd-hackers  Mon Nov  9 16:26:24 1998
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Date: Mon, 9 Nov 1998 16:25:35 -0800 (PST)
From: dan@math.berkeley.edu (Dan Strick)
Message-Id: <199811100025.QAA04722@math.berkeley.edu>
To: nate@mt.sri.com
Subject: Re: linux software installation and uname
Cc: dan@math.berkeley.edu, freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG
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> No, but in order to get the 'correct' behavior, I have to know which OS
> I need emulated so I can set the environment variable correctly.
> 
> So, if I want to run SCO's Informix which uses uname (it does, BTW), I
> have to set 'ALT_UNAME' to "SCO".  Then, I want to run StarOffice, so I
> have set 'ALT_UNAME' to "Linux", then I want to run the JDK, so I have
> to set  'ALT_UNAME' to "Solaris", or was it the Linux version that I was
> running?  I don't remember if it was the Solaris version, or the Linux
> version?
> 
> The point is that it's *NOT* transparent to the users, so the solution
> isn't any better than the initial problem, but it adds more bloat and
> more 'magic' solutions that are no better than editing shells scripts.

So you wrap a small shell script around certain commands that require
special things in their environment.  This has been an occasional
necessity for years.  For example, my netscape wrapper contains:

	...
	setenv CLASSPATH        "$N"/java*
	setenv XKEYSYMDB        "$N"/XKeysymDB
	setenv XNLSPATH         "$N"/nls
	setenv MOZILLA_HOME     "$N"
	setenv MAILCAP          /usr/local/misc/lib/netscape/mailcap
	setenv MIME_TYPES       /usr/local/misc/lib/netscape/mime_types
	setenv NPX_PLUGIN_PATH  /usr/local/misc/lib/netscape/plugins
	...
	exec /usr/bin/nice -4 "$N/$X" $*

and I have generic wrappers for several different versions of X11,
each of which likes a different executable search path, manual path,
library path, and I forget what else.  Life is complicated.  We have to
live with it.  (Though sometimes I consider going back in time and
strangling the people who would eventually invent and implement X before
they could grow up and commit such an artistic barbarism.  This approach
might actually be more likely to succeed.)

Dan Strick
dan@math.berkeley.edu

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