[osol-discuss] Re: [gnu-sol-discuss] Incorporating open-source cmds/libs into OpenSolaris

[Paul Jakma]

On Thu, 1 Dec 2005, Matthew Simmons wrote:

> Nobody finds them, because they're out of the way.
>
> It's also an annoyance for administrators, because they have to add 
> yet another directory to their PATH.
>
> Much better to put the new feature right in their path, so to speak, 
> than to make them have to take positive action just to find it.

Why can't this be done with an appropriate /etc/profile?

It's fairly easy to supply a system profile for both sh and csh to read 
in files from, e.g., /etc/profile.d/. If you install a package that 
creates, say, /usr/foo/bin/, that same package could also drop a file 
into /etc/profile.d/, say 'foo.sh' to do:

PATH="${PATH}:/usr/foo/bin"

(And potentially any other environment setup this 'foo' package needs). 
It can also supply a /etc/profile.d/foo.csh for csh users.

That way you get the best of both worlds. Logically seperated sets of 
binary directories + all commands available to the user in PATH. Unusual 
users can just set their own PATH if they wish. (Or you can take it 
further and have profile.d/foo.sh's PATH setting be conditional on the 
user /not/ having set FOO_EXCLUDE_PATH in their ~/.profile).

We have the technology :)

--paulj