docs/85104: keyboard(4) manpage hides behind Xorg version

Giorgos Keramidas keramida at ceid.upatras.gr
Mon Aug 22 03:25:25 UTC 2005


On 2005-08-22 03:10, "Gary W. Swearingen" <garys at opusnet.com> wrote:
>Dejan Lesjak <dejan.lesjak at ijs.si> writes:
>> I could still argue though that changing PATH is as advanced as
>> changing MANPATH, but it doesn't feel [...]
>
> It sounds like Giorgos is arguing the same way, so you outvote me.
>
> But don't you HAVE to change the default path after installing X11?

Not really.  The default PATH (as set in /etc/login.conf) already
includes /usr/X11R6/bin :-)

> I sure hope the ports system isn't messin' with my "profile".

That would be awful.

> And where do we learn to put more-custom directories at the end of
> PATH instead of the beginning (where I think they belong)?

Nowhere, I guess.  It's one of those things that you have to apply
Common Sense(TM) to.  For instance, on my Solaris workstation at work,
where I really *MUST* use a local version of autoconf, automake and
libtool (from /opt/autotools) and not the one that is part of the Sun
Freeware collection (from /usr/sfw), I really *do* want /opt/autotools
to be near the beginning of the PATH.  That's something I found out by
experimenting with various setups though.

> The several examples of PATH setting in the Handbook show both
> theories (even within the same PATH), with mine favored, including:
> PATH=/usr/X11R6/bin:$PATH;
>
> (One theory is that more-custom directories should override less-custom
> ones so you can easily "replace" their programs; the other theory is
> that doing so makes it too easy to get unexpected custom behavior from
> less-custom programs.)

Unexpected behavior is, well, "unexpected" and should be avoided if
possible.  IMHO, it's rarely a good idea to prepend custom PATH entries
that may happen to "shadow" some of the utilities of the standard path.

What happens if you prepend /opt/foo to the default path that includes
an "sh" binary that is an interpreter for language Foobar instead of a
/bin/sh replacement and then you accidentally type "sh hello.sh"? :-)

>> But then again if you change PATH so X11 stuff is first perhaps it is
>> expected to also get manpages for X11 first?
>
> Yes, but it's not expected (by me) to be so hard to display both
> manpages.
>
> But this will only waste a small amount of time for a small fraction
> of FreeBSD users, so it's no big deal.  Suspend or close the PR.

Thanks.




More information about the freebsd-doc mailing list