[bug-notifications] [alternatives 0004559]: --set does not work

[Mantis Bug Tracker]

A NOTE has been added to this issue. 
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https://www.opencsw.org/mantis/view.php?id=4559 
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Reported By:                holzi
Assigned To:                phil
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Project:                    alternatives
Issue ID:                   4559
Category:                   regular use
Reproducibility:            always
Severity:                   major
Priority:                   normal
Status:                     feedback
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Date Submitted:             2010-09-30 15:47 CEST
Last Modified:              2010-10-04 02:17 CEST
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Summary:                    --set does not work
Description: 
during testing the new apache2 package I wanted to change the alternative:

/opt/csw/sbin/alternatives --display httpd
Installed alternatives for httpd are:
/opt/csw/apache2/sbin/httpd httpd /opt/csw/apache2/sbin/httpd.prefork 100
/opt/csw/apache2/sbin/httpd httpd /opt/csw/apache2/sbin/httpd.worker 50


/opt/csw/sbin/alternatives --set httpd /opt/csw/apache2/sbin/httpd.worker

ln: cannot create /etc/opt/etc/alternatives/httpd: No such file or
directory

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 (0008343) bwalton (developer) - 2010-10-04 02:17
 https://www.opencsw.org/mantis/view.php?id=4559#c8343 
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--snip--
It's unfortunate that we have lots of old legacy GAR support and
documentation, that was left around from OTHER implementations of
"alternatives", so that may have lead you astray here.
--snip--

I'd actually say it's more unfortunate that the rewrite of alternatives
doesn't handle what the original version did. :)

I also agree with Dago here.  Splitting the httpd.* files made sense
previously as we had postinstall scripts that handled swapping things
around.  Given that this is the perfect use case for alternatives, there is
no real need for a secondary package (aside from the issue James noted) at
this point.

I _can_ deliver httpd.worker in ap2_worker for now, but I'm still going to
expect that you fix alternatives properly in the long run.