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Revision as of 21:26, 30 June 2009 by Abo (talk | contribs) (first draft)
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Environment modules is a system for manipulating environment variables upon the request of a user. The user adds or removes "modules" which for example can cause directories to be added to or removed from the PATH or MANPATH.

Typically this is used to allow a user to select between multiple versions of a single application or between multiple similar applications that provides the same commands. It's similar to the "alternatives" system but operates per user or per shell instead of per host.

If appropriate, a package should provide such a module by installing a module definition file in /usr/share/Modules/moduleshome/%{name}/%{version}. The contents of the file should be something like this:

/usr/share/Modules/moduleshome/java-1.5.0-gcj/1.5.0.0:

#%Module
prepend-path PATH /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.5.0-gcj-1.5.0.0

Notes: Who owns .version? Forbid it?