[indiana-discuss] Adopt Indiana personalities (GNU and SUN)

[Alan Coopersmith]

Brandorr wrote:
> Regarding the Sun vs. GNU userspace issue, might we consider following
> Nexenta's lead here?
> 
> http://www.nexenta.org/os/Different_Personalities
> 
> The default behavior of NexentaOS is to search for execution binaries
> in order described in the PATH. Standard locations such as /usr/bin
> and /usr/sbin all populated with GNU binaries, which makes NexentaOS
> behave as GNU system. SUN binaries saved in /usr/sun/bin and
> /usr/sun/sbin locations and system could be forced to use SUN-like
> personality by utilizing SUN_PERSONALITY environment variable.
> 
> SUN_PERSONALITY execve() system call logic implemented and it is
> finally allows Solaris-centric scripts to be executed in NexentaOS
> without modifications.
> 
> Simple SUN_PERSONALITY=1 environment variable will switch execution
> paths on the fly to look on /usr/sun/{bin,sbin} first.

Sounds like a lot of work that is much more simply handled by setting
$PATH - why would changing exec be better than setting $PATH to the
value you want?

-- 
	-Alan Coopersmith-           alan.coopersmith at sun.com
	 Sun Microsystems, Inc. - X Window System Engineering