On 1/12/2009 7:02 PM, Chris Quenelle wrote:
> Torrey McMahon wrote:
>
>> What's the plan for systems that have multiple users or users that
>> require access to different versions at different times? In theory you'd
>> want to allow a user to have access to multiple versions of the
>> {toolkit, compiler, ...} and let them select which they want as default.
>> It might be as simple as, "Have the user change their path" but it
>> shouldn't be that hard to do and the system shouldn't get in the way. If
>> I have /usr/bin in my path and all those symlinks are in the way I'd
>> have to make sure I place /path/to/the/version I want at the front every
>> time I want to override. (Perhaps do the logout/login cha-cha too.)
>> Setting an environment variable is a bit easier but requires a lot more
>> work on the part of the packagers. I'm thinking along the lines of
>> ISALIST when used, ironically, when building things in the first place.
>>
>
>
> For the forseeable future, unbundled versions of Sun Studio will still be
> available for download and install as before. This case only covers
> the inclusion of one specific version as a bundled compiler.
>
> Using packaging to select the default compiler is not nearly as useful
> on a multi-user system as it is on a single-user system.
>
> We are not solving the "$PATH sucks" problem.
>
> Perhaps you are prepared to argue that we should not include any
> compiler on the user's default path because we might chose wrong.
> I don't think you'd win that argument.
>
Not at all. Just that, down the road, we should make sure to keep such
things in mind. A standard way to allow such things to live together
would be nice. Even in the case of gnu vs. sunstudio. Again, I'll point
at the NetBeans example but expand it to be system wide for what I'm
thinking about.
