Nicolas Williams wrote: > On Thu, Jan 25, 2007 at 11:40:41AM -0500, Kyle McDonald wrote: > >> PATH is the solution to this. It's a good solution. The developers that >> we are looking to attract to work on solaris should have no problem >> understanding how to configure their path for their preferences. >> > > The problem with *PATH is that it's too difficult to use. Wanna change > it? First you need to know what shell you're using, then you need to > edit the right dot files. That's insane -- try building a GUI around > that. Sure, JDS/GNOME could have a different authoritative location of > *PATH configuration and the stock dot files could preserve whatever > *PATH are set by the GUI environment, but when logging in without a GUI > you lose, or if you edit your dot files and do the wrong thing, you > lose. > Why have an additional place? You lost me there.
I'm all for updating the *default* path to include this stuf, so that the 'average' user doesn't have to go looking. I'm just against taking this tool (and it is a tool) away from the developers and users who know how to use it. If all the binaries are in /usr/bin, why have a $PATH at all? > This isn't friendly. You and I know how to maintain our dot files, but > our mothers and grandmothers don't. > > And our mothers and grandmothers aren't going to wonder whether they're using solaris grep or GNU grep either are they? They're going to want the GUI applications to work. The Developers will need to make sure the GUI application that requires GNU grep either exec it with the full path, or updates it's own $PATH beforehand. Not that big a deal for a developer. -Kyle
