Christopher Faylor wrote:
My only concern is that update-alternatives in any incarnation might cause confusion for cygwin users, especially for something like /bin/sh, since it, AFAIK, relies on symlinks. That means that /bin/sh won't be runnable from the Windows command prompt.
Good point.
I don't know any way around this other than to make actual copies of the file or maybe make hard links where appropriate. Do any of the proposed packages deal use copies or hard links already?
No, they all use symlinks (the ALT-Linux version MIGHT allow one to specify a "copy policy" for the 'link' in /etc/alternatives/, but the link in /bin will still be symbolic. I think.
I guess this means that regardless, /bin/sh is NOT a good candidate for an "alternatives-like" system. But surely others are, like the myriad automakes, and "generic" services like /usr/bin/editor, emacs-vs-xemacs, /usr/bin/mail-transfer-agent, etc.
-- Chuck
