On Tue, Feb 12, 2013 at 09:22:20AM +1100, Brian Salter-Duke wrote:
> ...
> > I guess there is some confusion: Synaptic, like aptitude and apt-get,
> > is for installing and removing packages. Update-alternatives is to
> > choose which program to use when you have several programs installed
> > that offer similar functionality, such as the patched and the
> > un-patched versions of mutt. You may install both using synaptics and
> > then choose which one to use (by default) without uninstalling the
> > other.
>
> No, that is not how it worked. I had the normal mutt for months.
> Yesterday I installed mutt-patched and it overwrote mutt. It was just a
> link to mutt-patched. Am I missing something?
>
Dear Brian,
I guess there is still some confusion. When you installed
mutt-patched, mutt was overwritten. The same thing happened to me. In
my system, /usr/bin/mutt is a link pointing to
/etc/alternatives/mutt. Furthermore, /etc/alternatives/mutt is a link
pointing to /usr/bin/mutt-patched, which is the actual binary for the
patched version of mutt. Using the command update-alternatives as I
mentioned a couple of messages ago, this link may be replaced by a
link to /usr/bin/mutt-org, which is the binary for the unpatched
mutt. Thus I can experiment alternating freely between mutt-patched
and mutt (unpatched) without having to uninstall either. I use Debian,
but I understand that the 'alternatives' system is available in Ubuntu
also.
Best regards,
Luis
