2009/7/23 Nirbheek Chauhan <nirbheek@g.o>:
> 2009/7/23 Sérgio Almeida <mephx.x@...>:
>> A child process cannot (or shouldn't be able to) change parent's process
>> environment.
>>
>> uprofile will need to change env var's on-the-fly. For instance tag $PS1
>> with the current profile in use
>>
>
> I don't understand what use this feature has. Won't the "current
> profile" be persistent across shells? If so, won't PS1 not be
> persistent if you change in on-the-fly? If you don't intend to keep it
> persistent, what's the use? (Actually, I don't see the use of having
> it at all)

I think the point he is making is that when you update the environment
variable, you want it to start reflecting in the current shell
immediately. Correct me if I'm wrong.

If this is the case, spawning a new shell might not be an option,
since you will lose the shell's history (you'll even need to do some
work to make sure you spawn the same shell (bash/csh/zsh) as the user
is currently using. And there's going to be an element of surprise if
multiple calls to uselect end up meaning that the user needs to use
Ctrl-D/logout/exit several times to end the current session.

IMO, it is cleaner to just print a message telling the user to source
/etc/profile as eselect does currently.

Keep up the good work.
-- 
Arun Raghavan
http://arunraghavan.net/
(Ford_Prefect | Gentoo) & (arunsr | GNOME)