On Wed, 17 Jan 2001, Skip Montanaro wrote:
> Why is /usr/bin/perl checked last? Seems to me to be the most
> likely place to find it. Why not use something akin to
> tramp-sh-program to allow users to specify odd locations for perl?
Tramp must check for perl5 first, since on those systems where perl5
exists, perl might be version 4, and Tramp does not work with Perl 4.
Tramp checks directories in the sequence mentioned in
tramp-remote-path. You can fiddle with that variable if you like.
(It is safe to include directories in this variable which do not exist
on all hosts, since Tramp first goes through this list of directories
and for each host discards the ones that don't exist.)
I'm trying to write Tramp in such a way that it figures out as many
things as possible about the remote environment on its own. Maybe
this was a wrong decision. I'm open to arguments. My thinking was
that people probably don't know much about the remote hosts, so
asking them a lot of questions about each host beforehand is not a
good idea.
The only reason that tramp-remote-sh exists is that "exec /bin/sh" is
the very first command that's issued by Tramp, so that it at least
knows how to set the prompt and stuff like this. Before running "exec
/bin/sh" on the remote host, it is nearly impossible to find out
anything about that host at all. (Waiting for the shell prompt and
then issuing this command is quite fragile already.) In the
beginning, I assumed that every Unix host had a /bin/sh and that "exec
/bin/sh" would be a good way to start a known shell from the
beginning.
Some people put forth some arguments which kind of convinced me that
some people might like "exec /bin/ksh" at that point or whatever. I'm
sure you will be able to find the discussion at www.mailarchive.com
(or www.mail-archives.com?). Refresh my memory :-)
kai
--
Be indiscrete. Do it continuously.
