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Date: Thu, 26 Mar 2009 09:18:32 -0400
From: Charles Wilson <cygwin AT cwilson DOT fastmail DOT fm>
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Subject: Re: /etc/alternatives  was RE: [Re: GCC 4 installation problem]
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Phil Betts wrote:
> For the first problem, I think it would help avoid installation problems
> if the directory contained a simple README file explaining how to 
> properly maintain the links, and why manually changing them is a bad 
> idea.  To avoid looking like just another link, and thus getting 
> overlooked, I think this should be a real file, rather than a symlink 
> to the README in the doc directory.  Maybe Chuck could add this to the 
> cygwin alternatives package, or perhaps he would prefer the upstream 
> chkconfig maintainer to consider it.

That's a good suggestion; I'll do that when I roll out the next
alternatives update (which should be sometime before 1.7 goes live).

> For the second problem, perhaps it would also help if the names of the 
> links in the alternatives directory were a hash of the program name.
> E.g.
>  /usr/bin/gs -> /etc/alternatives/9ad6a289eea9c92be09d3a5a8bc737e6
>  /etc/alternatives/9ad6a289eea9c92be09d3a5a8bc737e6 -> /usr/bin/gs-x11
> where 9ad6a289eea9c92be09d3a5a8bc737e6 is the md5sum of "/usr/bin/gs".
> This would make it much more obvious that the links were managed, or 
> at least give one pause for thought before diving in.

But this...no.  At least, not specifically for the cygwin port; I don't
want enlarge the cygwin differences from mainline chkconfig even more.
Besides, the upgrade issues would be horrendous.  OTOH, if you can
convince the upstream chkconfig package to make that change, then we'll
pick it up eventually.

chkconfig is a Red Hat tool, and at last investigation builds
specifically and only on Fedora/RHE without modification (maybe other
linuxes, but it isn't autotooled IIRC).  So, cygwin's port is based off
of this one:
http://www.fastcoder.net/software/chkconfig/

The only differences (other than the autoconf nature, and the use of
getopt_long rather than popt -- both pluses, as far as I am concerned)
between fastcoder version 1.3.30c and Fedora 8 version 1.3.36 are (a)
translations (b) the alternatives man page and (c) some behavioral
changes in the chkconfig prog. Neither (a) nor (c) matter to cygwin's
alternatives package, so I'm happy to stick with the fastcoder version.

--
Chuck


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