On 20.06.2015 11:38, Riccardo Boninsegna wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 19, 2015 at 11:33 PM, Didier Kryn <kryn@???> wrote:
>> Le 18/06/2015 17:23, Laurent Bercot a écrit :
>>> Absolutely. Why enforce exclusion when you can have a choice ?
>>> Make a "currently active" vs. "inactive" switch, I don't know the
>>> Debian/Devuan terminology, and allow users to install both.
>>
>>

>>      There's already an exemple of that kind: you may have xdm, gdm3, kdm and
>> lightdm installed; you decide which is the one in effect by running
>> dpkg-reconfigure any-of-them.

>
> Yup, assuming the kernel-to-init code understands chained symlinks it
> would be relatively easy to port all init systems to the
> "alternatives" feature :
> The generic name is not a direct symbolic link to the selected
> alternative. Instead, it is a symbolic link to a name
> in the alternatives directory, which in turn is a symbolic link to
> the actual file referenced.

Perhaps alternatives are not designed for this, it seems like bad idea
for reliability. There are always dangling, casual, insane symlinks in
/etc/alternatives for one reason or another. They don't affect
trustworthiness only because there are nothing critical here.


--
sa