XJed is a superset of jed

[Rafael Laboissiere]

* G. Milde <g.milde@web.de> [2005-06-23 09:59]:

> >Should we make xjed a replacement of jed? 
> 
> I am not sure,
> 
>  * jed is still a bit smaller than xjed (although the difference of
>    226264 - 187704 bytes might be negligible), but
> 
>  * installing less packages is nice. 
>  
> so we could possibly give the users/administrators a choice.
> 
> (We could even consider abadoning the jed/xjed separation and provide
> just one "jed" package with xjed and the wrapper script.)

One possibility would be to use the alternatives mechanism.  Let us say that
the packages install the following executables:

    jed:
        /usr/bin/jed.real
	
    xjed:
        /usr/bin/xjed
	/usr/bin/jed.wrapper
	
Then, using update-alternatives(8) in the postinst and prerm scripts, the
symbolic links /usr/bin/jed and /etc/alternatives/jed would be created.
In the case only xjed is installed, we would have:

    /usr/bin/jed -> /etc/alternatives/jed -> /usr/bin/jed.wrapper
    
When only jed installed, we would have:

    /usr/bin/jed -> /etc/alternatives/jed -> /usr/bin/jed.real
      
The later would be the default when both packages are present.  This
would be transparent to the users and the administrator could change the
alternatives at will when both packages are installed. 

This is the "Debian way of doing things".

-- 
Rafael