on my quest to spiff up the ref manual variables glossary, a question
about ALTERNATIVE_LINK_NAME, explained here:

http://www.yoctoproject.org/docs/latest/ref-manual/ref-manual.html#var-ALTERNATIVE_LINK_NAME

 at first glance, that explanation *suggests* that the purpose of that
variable is to support an alternative name to an existing command, but
it doesn't make it clear that a *very* common usage is to simply
create a link with precisely the same name elsewhere. you see a *lot*
of this throughout the recipes (like this snippet from util-linux):

ALTERNATIVE_LINK_NAME[dmesg] = "${base_bindir}/dmesg"
ALTERNATIVE_LINK_NAME[kill] = "${base_bindir}/kill"
ALTERNATIVE_LINK_NAME[more] = "${base_bindir}/more"
ALTERNATIVE_LINK_NAME[mkswap] = "${base_sbindir}/mkswap"
ALTERNATIVE_LINK_NAME[blockdev] = "${base_sbindir}/blockdev"

which appears to simply create symlinks from /bin to programs in
/usr/bin, yes? (that's what it's doing, right?) i suspect it would be
useful to mention that application in the explanation, unless i'm
totally misunderstanding what i'm reading.

  also, since:

"If ALTERNATIVE_LINK_NAME is not defined, it defaults to
${bindir}/<name>."

lines like this from util-linux.inc:

ALTERNATIVE_LINK_NAME[eject] = "${bindir}/eject"

are kind of silly, no?

rday

-- 

========================================================================
Robert P. J. Day                                 Ottawa, Ontario, CANADA
                        http://crashcourse.ca

Twitter:                                       http://twitter.com/rpjday
LinkedIn:                               http://ca.linkedin.com/in/rpjday
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