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Created attachment 1167969 [details]
Patch that adds support for symlink targets to alternatives --set

Currently, alternatives --set only works if the target is the target that was specified during creation.

In instances where we may want to support multiple versions of something (that require unique install locations), scripting via alternatives becomes convoluted as it requires link resolution before-hand (or knowledge of unique location).

This proposed patch makes it to that alternatives --set can take a symlink target argument as well as an actual file target.

Would it be possible to add this to RHEL-7?

The genesis of this request is an OpenJDK bug, bug#1344059

Deepak, I think the main patch to alternatives is missing.

(In reply to jiri vanek from comment #2)
> Deepak, I think the main patch to alternatives is missing.

The posted patch is against our git 7.3 branch of chkconfig. If contains 0007-alternatives-allow-symlink-target.patch which the RPM patches in at build time.

Thanks for the patch I will review it as soon as possible.

You see, it is not visible form https://bugzilla.redhat.com/attachment.cgi?id=1167969&action=diff

But indeed it is visible from  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/attachment.cgi?id=1167969

Sorry for noise

Ok, devel_ack for this change, although I must say that I am not happy with amount of symlinks we are dealing with.

This is more a question suited for memo-list, but have you though how you will package java in distant future? I was even thinking about introducing some namespacing features to alternatives, so you could use different alternatives with different programs at the same time, but maybe a different new tool would be more appropriate.

Please see 

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1344059#c20 and https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1344059#c22 for different possibel fix.

SO I guess we have agreed to use --family for --set and --config, so this bug can be closed.