In article <Pine.NEB.4.33.0303201440340.16283-100000@vespasia.home-net.icnt.net> you write:
>On Thu, 20 Mar 2003, Greywolf wrote:
>
>> I think the point being brought up here is "why don't we wrapperize
>> <x> to prevent third-party pre-emption of system utilities?" (MTA, DNS,
>> printing, curses, the list could go on).
>
>I think there is a good criterial that we can establish for what we wrap
>and what we don't.

I think you're right there, but I think you've got the criterion slightly
wrong.  For most things that a user might replace (m4, vi, libcurses ...),
it doesn't really matter if programs call the wrong one.  Having GNU m4
installed won't stop the standard NetBSD m4 working, so any application that
runs the old m4 will still work (assuming it wasn't expecting GNUish
functionality, of course).

In the case of lpr and sendmail, though, if the user has installed a
replacement, the standard version _won't_ work.  Submitting a print job
through the in-tree lpd won't work if the in-tree lpr isn't running, and
similarly sending mail though Sendmail won't work very well if the user has
only configured Exim.

I think what this boils down to is that where there's a standard
programmatic interface to a system service, and the user is likely to
replace that service, then it's reasonable to wrapper it.  Something like
that, anyway

-- 
Ben Harris                                                   <bjh21@netbsd.org>
Portmaster, NetBSD/acorn26           <URL:http://www.netbsd.org/Ports/acorn26/>