* on Sunday, 2019-10-20 14:24 +1000, Allan McRae <allan@archlinux.org> 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)