[csw-maintainers] Alternatives

[Maciej (Matchek) Blizinski]

On Thu, Dec 10, 2009 at 7:00 PM, Philip Brown <phil at bolthole.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Dec 10, 2009 at 10:28 AM, Maciej (Matchek) Blizinski
> <maciej at opencsw.org> wrote:
>> On Thu, Dec 10, 2009 at 5:59 PM, Philip Brown <phil at bolthole.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> Then how will humans specify what they want?
>>
>> User, non-maintainer humans?  They will use rm and ln to make
>> different symlinks in /etc/opt/csw/alternatives.
>>
>
> ick. that's rather user-unfriendly.

On the contrary, this is exactly why it's user friendly.  You don't
have to know about update-alternatives command line to manage your
alternatives.  If you want to change which sudo to use, you can go
/etc/opt/csw/alternatives, replace existing symlink with the one you
want and be done with it.  The next time you upgrade sudo or
sudo_ldap, update-alternatives will notice that the symlink has been
changed, and it won't touch it.  It's similar to the way we currently
handle configuration files.

Of course, nothing prevents humans from using the update-alternatives
command line.  If someone wants to type less, they should be
intelligent enough to use the power of alias.