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Date:      Sat, 6 Jun 1998 15:23:58 +0200 (MET DST)
From:      Willem Jan  Withagen <wjw@surf.IAEhv.nl>
To:        jkh@time.cdrom.com
Cc:        current@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: lorder problem: aout vs. elf (and GNU Configure problem too)
Message-ID:  <199806061323.PAA08967@surf.IAEhv.nl>
In-Reply-To: <3555.897110276@time.cdrom.com>
References:  <199806052121.OAA04575@usr08.primenet.com>

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In article <3555.897110276@time.cdrom.com> you write:
>> My gut feeling would be to put variant symbolic links in, and use a
>> dollarsign ("$") to designate a kernel variant keyword:
>> 
>> ln -s "/usr/lib.\${\$imgact}" /usr/lib
>
>Yuck.  That's gross and you know it's gross, so I won't even try to
>argue the point.  Why the gratuitous complication?  Just accept $foo
>or ${foo} as the usual convention and, if you're absolutely dead-set
>against having the kernel grub around in the user's actual environment
>for this information, have it look in a logical name table someplace
>with a new sysctl()'ish API for frobbing it.  Too bad sysctl(8)
>doesn't allow one to add new variables dynamically when the system is
>up, you could even use sysctl for this one.

I do not want to debate the actual implemented syntax.  But comming from
Apollo Domain OS this "feature" was one the the first things I missed when
going to "real" Unix. So I would really find this an enhancement to FreeBSD.

Apollo Domain OS had three faces: BSD, SysV and Domain OS and depending  the
OStype ENV you set, you would get the different types of programma's lib's
etc. This all due to the "variant symbolic links".

I myself used it al lot to switch between several versions of home-made
compiler-tools, and to maintain several versions of the /usr/local and
/usr/experiment trees on one file server without all the hassle of redoing
all links once a system would get upgraded.

Now for the syntax, one would just do:
	ln -s '/usr/lib.${imgact}' /usr/lib
So the file/link name would contain the expansion text.

Too bad I don't really have the time to do serious programming any longer,
as this would be fun to do.

--WjW
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