[csw-maintainers] Bugreport on alternatives with NFS-shared /opt/csw

[Philip Brown]

On Wed, Mar 17, 2010 at 1:06 AM, Dagobert Michelsen <dam at opencsw.org> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> could someone who advocates shared NFS please suggest something on the
> user of alternatives in such an environment?
>  <http://www.opencsw.org/bugtrack/view.php?id=4352>
>

I'd like to, but I dont fully understand what "alternatives" is doing.
you sort of half-explain it, in the ticket.

Cold you please give a more concise definition of what exactly the
alternatives stuff is doing with /etc directories?
And why things are breaking, with shared /opt/csw?

I will preemptively note that, while we previously have advocated "use
/etc/opt/csw for local overrides and configs",
it has always been an OPTIONAL override mechanism. If the stuff in
/etc does not exist, the package should usually still continue to work
in some default fashion.  So at first blush, it would seem that our
"alternatives" system needs some tweaking, to be more globally
friendly, in the manner that our other stuff is already.