On Sat, Sep 28, 2002 at 01:18:31PM +0200, Santiago Vila wrote: > Well, yes, more or less. In the example about gawk replacing mawk > you'll see that at all times there is a working awk. I don't see > a fundamental reason why this should not work for dash and bash.
It works for mawk/gawk because the alternatives mechanism is already set up. The problem with dash/bash is not that alternatives wouldn't work if it were set up that way. It's getting from where we are now to the desired state. And I doubt it's impossible, but it's a lot of work -- one attempt already failed and hosed a lot of people's systems. And the fact is that the current system, while less than ideal, does work. The number of people who would benefit from an improved system is actually pretty small -- I suspect that 99% of users (including ourselves) are content with bash as /bin/sh. And the rest *can* do what they want, it's just not as easy as it could be. So it's a lot of work for not much gain. OTOH, if you feel so strongly about it, perhaps you'll be motivated to come up with a transition plan that works in all cases, and test it, and present it to the appropriate maintainers. I certainly would not object. -- Chris Waters | Pneumonoultra- osis is too long [EMAIL PROTECTED] | microscopicsilico- to fit into a single or [EMAIL PROTECTED] | volcaniconi- standalone haiku
