From owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Sat Mar 17 04:08:54 2012 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Received: from mx2.freebsd.org (mx2.freebsd.org [69.147.83.53]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0BFC5106566B; Sat, 17 Mar 2012 04:08:54 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from dougb@FreeBSD.org) Received: from opti.dougb.net (hub.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::36]) by mx2.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3CA4314E4D2; Sat, 17 Mar 2012 04:08:53 +0000 (UTC) Message-ID: <4F640E54.1040401@FreeBSD.org> Date: Fri, 16 Mar 2012 21:08:52 -0700 From: Doug Barton Organization: http://SupersetSolutions.com/ User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; FreeBSD amd64; rv:10.0.2) Gecko/20120224 Thunderbird/10.0.2 MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Eric van Gyzen References: <4F60C059.7060904@FreeBSD.org> <4F63E809.1080606@FreeBSD.org> <4F63ED21.60302@vangyzen.net> In-Reply-To: <4F63ED21.60302@vangyzen.net> X-Enigmail-Version: 1.3.5 OpenPGP: id=1A1ABC84 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: Adrian Chadd , Oleg Moskalenko , freebsd-current@freebsd.org, Jonathan Anderson , Gabor Kovesdan , freebsd-ports@freebsd.org Subject: Re: CFT: new BSD-licensed sort available X-BeenThere: freebsd-current@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Discussions about the use of FreeBSD-current List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sat, 17 Mar 2012 04:08:54 -0000 On 03/16/2012 18:47, Eric van Gyzen wrote: > On 03/16/2012 08:25 PM, Doug Barton wrote: >> On 03/14/2012 15:14, Jonathan Anderson wrote: >>> In fact, the runtime behaviour of the Debian "alternatives" system is >>> simpler than that: >>> http://segfault.in/2010/04/using-the-debian-alternatives-system/ > [...] >> This sounds like a good solution to more than one problem. Does anyone >> know why they indirect through 2 sets of symlinks? That article doesn't >> touch on the "why?" only the what. > > Do you mean, why do they do > /usr/bin/vim -> /etc/alternatives/vim -> /usr/bin/vim.gtk > instead of > /usr/bin/vim -> /usr/bin/vim.gtk > ? > > Someone's choice of a vi-like editor would be considered configuration, > so it belongs in /etc. If that's the *only* reason then it seems to me that it would be better solved by being able to express that in a config file in /usr/local/etc which the alternate-updater script takes into account. But I need to install debian for other reasons anyway, so I'll look at this in more detail. Thanks. -- This .signature sanitized for your protection