On Thu, Jul 25, 2002 at 04:47:39PM -0400, Harold L Hunt II wrote:
Let me see if I understand what is going on here:
We are debeating whether to:
1) Modify /etc/profile, which is not installed via a package, but is
created directly by setup.exe.
2) Add two scripts, one for bash-style shells and one for c-shell-style
shells to /etc/profile.d/. These scripts are processed by
/etc/profile. We would add this new scripts to an XFree86 package,
probably XFree86-bin, and we would install these scripts via a
post-install script if they were not already present (so we do not
overwrite modifications).
Of all the arguments for/against the two methods, so far only one seems
to be a sticking point that essentially decides how we will do this:
There is no guarantee that the sub-script in /etc/profile.d/ that
adds /usr/X11R6/bin to the path will be executed before some other shell
script, that may be added at a later date to /etc/profile.d/, that
requires that the path to the X11R6 binaries already be set. In order
to allow other scripts in /etc/profile.d/ to assume that the path to the
X11R6 binaries is known, we must set the path to the binaries in
/etc/profile before the /etc/profile.d/ scripts are processed.
I don't know what this "other" script in /etc/profile.d might be, but
if it is a problem for the "other" script, it could easily include
/etc/profile.d/add_x11_path (or whatever) to add the script to ensure
that the path was properly set.
So, I think that adding an appropriate file to /etc/profile.d makes
more sense. Then people who don't have /usr/bin/X11R6 don't have
a spurious check for the directory in their /etc/profile.
cgf
That sounds even more reasonable. No one has suggested that yet.