Re: Anybody working on removing sendmail from base?

[Chris Pressey <cpressey@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, 1 Oct 2003 17:47:44 -0600
Mike Porter <mupi@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> As I said before, I don't see the point/need to make a program
> 'unavailable' to a user (in any sense except that typing, for example,
> 'gcc --version' will result in a different value).

What if I have users that I don't want to run gcc at all?  Granted,
today I would set up groups and make gcc group-executable only - but
this VFS-viewfs way seems much more elegant, because they wouldn't even
have to know gcc exists.

> To me, the idea of a program being unavailable 
> means that no matter what I do as the user, I will never see/know that
> the program is installed.  This to me is overkill.

It IS overkill, for package management.  But it's not just for package
management, right?  Done correctly, it could unify a number of disparate
mechanisms currently in place.  chroot, for one.

But anyway, it's an academic discussion at this point, since it would be
a good idea to implement variant symlinks, if only to evaluate them.

-Chris