Re: GNU System Explanation

[Claudio Fontana]

--- "Richard M. Stallman" <address@hidden> ha scritto: 

>     However, I do not understand why the need for
> the
>     symlink.
>     The packages could be directly installed in
>     /packages/package_name/ as a real directory,
> with the
>     same result.
> 
> That is right.  However, symlinks make installation
> and deinstallation
> more convenient.

Right.

> Also, the name of the symlink can specify virtual
> renaming of the
> executables "installed" in /bin.  That's how you
> would make two
> versions of Emacs coexist.
 
You mean that, for example, the translator sees a name
like /packages/emacs-21.4.2 and so it makes all
binaries appear in /bin with -21.4.2 appended?

This is nice and could work for most software, but
some other software depends on the executable name.

One workaround is of course to make for example
/packages/emacs point to the preferred version, and
thus elide problems for some other packages checking
for the 'emacs' executable, 

but another problem is represented by packages
containing multiple, mutually calling executables. See
wine, for example, with executable names set in stone
like "wine-preloader" and "wineserver", with the wine
executable spawning them.
Maybe a workaround here could be to instruct the
translators to let each running process see a
different /bin, where all executables in the same
package do not see the version string appended. Does
not seem that clean, though.

I see other problems with shared libraries that I keep
for the next time.

CLaudio




        

        
                
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