Re: [OT] Scripts, packages, etc.

Dan Kegel writes:
> The 'alternatives' paradigm (from Debian?) suggests
> that programs should be installed with version numbers in the name

That would break the Debian package system's concept of blah 3.5 being
related to---in particular, newer than---blah 3.4. You wouldn't be able
to say ``this package requires blah 3.4 or above.''

I do want a package manager to be able to automatically discard older
package versions that I haven't used in a while and haven't marked ``do
not erase.'' I also want a package manager to be able to automatically
figure out that a dependency needs to be upgraded. The ``alternatives''
system doesn't do any of this correctly.

---D. J. Bernstein, Associate Professor, Department of Mathematics,
Statistics, and Computer Science, University of Illinois at Chicago