Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

Alternatives works that way, because conflicting binary names are messy to handle, but at the same time it works that way, because that's the behaviour you normally want in your system. You want "a grep" and "an awk" and many others.


I know how alternatives work, and they are not used to make packages with the same named binaries drop in replacements.

They are used to make packages with differently named binaries able to implement standard shell commands.

There is no need to match binary names. It doesn't really help with anything.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: