On 20/10/19 7:52 pm, Daan van Rossum wrote: > * on Sunday, 2019-10-20 14:24 +1000, Allan McRae <[email protected]> wrote: > >> That is on the cards. I had the example of the lua include directory >> in the first email, but did not explicitly specify that we could symlink >> directories as well as files. > > Alternatives management via "dynamic modification of a user's environment" > has been popular in HPC for decades, e.g. see [1]. In particular, being able > to use different alternatives in separate environments is very useful. (This > does not preclude setting user-wide or all-user-wide defaults.) > > It may be helpful to consider separately feature-rich, flexible, dynamic > alternatives management for a user's convenience on one hand, versus > functionality that is essential for the system to work properly on the other. > > Package dependencies probably fall under the latter category, as well as > sh->bash/dash awk->gawk/nawk cc/clang, whereas lua->lua51/lua52/lua53 or > java->java-8-openjdk/... fall under the second, I guess... > > Best, Daan > > P.S. I hope this is contribution is constructive, but please let me know if > it isn't! > > 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environment_Modules_(software)
It is constructive, but I don't think is necessarily relevant. Pacman is a system package manager, not a userspace software manager. The HPC use case is quite different. It allows pieces of software to be made available to individual users, but not system-wide. Allan
