[gobolinux-users] Solution for situation when more programs provide same file

[hisham.hm at gmail.com]

On 7/1/07, Isaac Dupree <isaacdupree at charter.net> wrote:
> How about NON-dot files.
>
> System/Links/Libraries/curl.h
> System/Links/Libraries/curl.h--ProgOther-3.4
> ...

A bold proposal!

> (If conflicts include multiple versions of the same program, this might
> get ugly...)

No, they don't. Different versions are expected to often provide the
same file, so one overwriting the other is not considered a conflict,
but an upgrade/downgrade.

> otherwise it only shows ugliness where there is ugliness,
> which isn't that often and is good to see when you're looking in there
> for some reason.  (I'm too ignorant about conflicts and such to know
> whether that made good sense.  And not listing the active program among
> the alternatives still bothers me a little, but that would mean
> non-conflicting symlinks should logically be annotated...)

I think this proposal has its pros, too, but people who were going
against dot-files because of the "keep it clean" argument will most
likely hate it.

BUT, making conflicts blatant to spot when troubleshooting something
may prove helpful in the long run. Imagine for example the user
wondering why their 3D doesn't work and seeing a libGL.so and a
libGL.so--Nvidia.conflict there -- that might point them towards the
right direction. (Much more than looking for hidden files or checking
at a /S/L/Conflicts they often wouldn't know about, I believe).

I like this. Like you said, it shows ugliness when there is ugliness.
On the flip side, sometimes conflicts are harmless -- but they're
still ugly and this would encourage to keep packages clear of
conflicts. This gets me thinking that this whole discussion would
benefit by being backed with numbers. I wonder how many conflicts
there are in real-world systems and which they are.

-- Hisham