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Date:      Fri, 03 Jul 1998 10:53:06 +0200 (CEST)
From:      Marino Ladavac <lada@pc8811.gud.siemens.at>
To:        Garance A Drosihn <drosih@rpi.edu>
Cc:        hackers@FreeBSD.ORG, jkh@time.cdrom.com, Thomas David Rivers <rivers@dignus.com>, Mike Smith <mike@smith.net.au>
Subject:   Re: Variant Link implementation, continued
Message-ID:  <XFMail.980703105306.lada@pc8811.gud.siemens.at>
In-Reply-To: <v0401171bb1c1acb4f7a9@[128.113.24.47]>

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On 02-Jul-98 Garance A Drosihn wrote:
> At 11:13 AM -0700 7/2/98, Mike Smith wrote:
>>>
>>>  So, given my experience - I'd prefer to not have this feature
>>>  in FreeBSD...   I'd suggest, at least, a mechanism (vis sysctl var?)
>>>  to globally disable it at an installation...
>>
>> How about "just don't use it"?  The point here is that it's an enabling
>> technology, not an intentional constriction of freedom.  If you don't
>> want it or can't manage it properly, you don't have to use it.
> 
> 
> Enabling technology will probably be attractive to people working on
> ports.  I suspect many of us will find ourselves using it, whether we
> are personally thrilled with it or not.  Certainly the idea of using
> {arch} to distinguish between alpha-specific vs intel-specific files
> would be immediately attractive, for instance.  I'm just asking what
> the best (most reliable) implementation might be for this variable
> symlink facility.

Some of you probably can still recollect the HP-UX Context Dependent Files
(I believe they are reduced-functionality Variant Symlinks) which existed
till HP-UX 10 threw them out.  They offered the limited functionality which
could select the CDF file content based on process context (which was
basically the arch equivalent).  This made it possible to have the HPPA and
Motorola executables in the same directory, with the same name.

A workalike thereof should suffice for your needs.

/Marino

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