On Tue, Jan 30, 2007 at 10:38:29AM -0800, John Plocher wrote: > C) Another problem is that of what actually ends up in /usr/bin. This > propoal > makes it "first come, first serve" - put it into /usr/bin as long as > you are the first one there, otherwise put it in a different place. This > gives us - over time - a rather random assortment of "first class" > executables in /usr/bin, with a slew of "2nd class" alternative bits > strewn around in many other places. And, by their nature, these > alternative > bits stand a very high chance of conflicting with other alternatives - > Joerg's > example of make comes to mind) > > At some future point, we may have: > Posix ls got there first, along with AT&T's make and Joerg's star. This > means that the gnu ls, csw's ls, make and star and the three or four > other > versions of make all are forced to live elsewhere. Let this accretion > continue for a while, and we will no longer be able to interpose any > "alternate command environment" without a potential slew of unintended, > unpredicted and undesired consequences.
This ship too long sailed. This is an attribute of our PATH-based environment selection scheme and history of putting new things into /usr/bin rather than in their own out-of-the-way locations (with historical exceptions that prove the point, e.g., the proc tools), not of this case. Nico --
