As I understand it, the whole point of /etc/profile.d/ is to allow packages to put their own startup scripts there and not modify /etc/profile - the underlying reason being that package management generally does a good job of adding and removing files, but changing them is fraught with difficulty.
> 2) Add two scripts, one for bash-style shells and one for c-shell- > style shells to /etc/profile.d/. These scripts are processed by > /etc/profile. We would add this new scripts to an XFree86 package, > probably XFree86-bin, and we would install these scripts via a > post-install script if they were not already present (so we do not > overwrite modifications). Why not just install them normally? Is this not the whole point of profile.d ? > Of all the arguments for/against the two methods, so far only one > seems to be a sticking point that essentially decides how we will do > this: > > There is no guarantee that the sub-script in /etc/profile.d/ that > adds /usr/X11R6/bin to the path will be executed before some other > shell script, that may be added at a later date to /etc/profile.d/, > that requires that the path to the X11R6 binaries already be set. In > order to allow other scripts in /etc/profile.d/ to assume that the > path to the X11R6 binaries is known, we must set the path to the > binaries in /etc/profile before the /etc/profile.d/ scripts are > processed. Can I just raise a point? If we named the script 00-XFree-path.sh, then wouldn't the 00 prefix ensure that this script executed before any scripts with first-character-alphabetic names? This seems to me the best way to solve this problem, unless someone can show that this ordering is not necessarily so. > I therefore throw my vote 100% behind modifying the /etc/profile > script to add /usr/X11R6/bin to the path, if that directory exists. I really don't think we should be messing with /etc/profile for this kind of thing. This is the raison d'être of /etc/profile.d/ . > Robert Collins had said something about pulling the /etc/profile > script out of setup.exe and having it installed as a stand-alone > package. Was this the task that two people had volunteered for? If > so, shall we wait until this package is made before we propose any > changes to /etc/profile, or should we go ahead and submit a patch for > the /etc/profile that is distributed with setup.exe now? Not _with_. _In_. > Hopefully I haven't confused anything here. I have not commented > until now because I had no idea what was going on with all of this > profile[.d] stuff, but I think I have a pretty good grasp of it now. Actually, that was a pretty useful synopsis of the current situation. > Harold Max.