From owner-freebsd-hackers Fri Jul 3 01:58:45 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id BAA15419 for freebsd-hackers-outgoing; Fri, 3 Jul 1998 01:58:45 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from zwei.siemens.at (zwei.siemens.at [193.81.246.12]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id BAA15414 for ; Fri, 3 Jul 1998 01:58:42 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from lada@pc8811.gud.siemens.at) Received: from pc8811.gud.siemens.at (root@[10.1.140.1]) by zwei.siemens.at with ESMTP id KAA12804; Fri, 3 Jul 1998 10:52:52 +0200 (MET DST) Received: from pc8811.gud.siemens.at (pc8811.gud.siemens.at [195.3.22.159]) by pc8811.gud.siemens.at (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id KAA16587; Fri, 3 Jul 1998 10:53:07 +0200 (CEST) (envelope-from lada@pc8811.gud.siemens.at) Message-ID: X-Mailer: XFMail 1.2 [p0] on FreeBSD X-Priority: 3 (Normal) Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit MIME-Version: 1.0 In-Reply-To: Date: Fri, 03 Jul 1998 10:53:06 +0200 (CEST) Organization: Siemens Austria AG From: Marino Ladavac To: Garance A Drosihn Subject: Re: Variant Link implementation, continued Cc: hackers@FreeBSD.ORG, jkh@time.cdrom.com, Thomas David Rivers , Mike Smith Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On 02-Jul-98 Garance A Drosihn wrote: > At 11:13 AM -0700 7/2/98, Mike Smith wrote: >>> >>> So, given my experience - I'd prefer to not have this feature >>> in FreeBSD... I'd suggest, at least, a mechanism (vis sysctl var?) >>> to globally disable it at an installation... >> >> How about "just don't use it"? The point here is that it's an enabling >> technology, not an intentional constriction of freedom. If you don't >> want it or can't manage it properly, you don't have to use it. > > > Enabling technology will probably be attractive to people working on > ports. I suspect many of us will find ourselves using it, whether we > are personally thrilled with it or not. Certainly the idea of using > {arch} to distinguish between alpha-specific vs intel-specific files > would be immediately attractive, for instance. I'm just asking what > the best (most reliable) implementation might be for this variable > symlink facility. Some of you probably can still recollect the HP-UX Context Dependent Files (I believe they are reduced-functionality Variant Symlinks) which existed till HP-UX 10 threw them out. They offered the limited functionality which could select the CDF file content based on process context (which was basically the arch equivalent). This made it possible to have the HPPA and Motorola executables in the same directory, with the same name. A workalike thereof should suffice for your needs. /Marino To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message