From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Message-Id: <77EE62CA-02C0-46FA-9BA1-CF99053DDFA0@fastmail.fm> From: Ethan Grammatikidis To: ebo@sandien.com, Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs <9fans@9fans.net> In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed; delsp=yes Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v936) Date: Thu, 15 Apr 2010 09:26:47 +0100 References: <17291D00-8580-474A-B398-8DCE626A9042@fastmail.fm> <000601cadc32$c9f51c80$5ddf5580$@gmail.com>, <000601cadc32$c9f51c80$5ddf5580$@gmail.com> Subject: Re: [9fans] 9vx patch to read environment var PLAN9 Topicbox-Message-UUID: 01981694-ead6-11e9-9d60-3106f5b1d025 On 15 Apr 2010, at 07:48, EBo wrote: > what I had meant is simply that when a user tries to run a program > which has > been installed system wide it should simply work. A good goal, but I'm not sure an environment variable is a good way to achieve it. At the very least it means, in a typical Linux distribution, an additional file in each of /etc/profile.d, /etc/ zprofile.d, /etc/cshlogin.d (or whatever they call it) and etc. for each shell the user might possibly want. Then there's the matter of users who commit the heinous crime of preferring a display manager over startx, which raises questions over when where or even _if_ system-wide environment variables will be set at all. Display managers are still the truculent beasts they were 10 years ago. Then too there's the possibility that some poor [l]user will get the notion that the environment variable is the right way to set the parameter, and get in a muddle when half his open xterms (that he's had open for the past month) still have the old setting. Better to let him write a script, at least he can stick it in ~/bin. (Yes, it happened to me, more than once, and rather converted me to wrapper scripts.) If some distro wants to stick a default 9vx tree in some _really_ weird place, let them patch the source! -- Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows it. -- Alan Perlis