update-alternatives per user

Question

i know that with update-alternatives admin can choose the current version of app. but is there something similar for non-root users. so they can switch their current version without affecting other users and without requiring root access?

Answer 1

I know this is an old question, but I wanted to chime in with a blatant promotion for the tool I just released that helps you configure per-user (or even per-shell !) alternatives:

• https://github.com/TekWizely/my-alternatives

You can initialize a shell-specific setup:

$ eval "$( my-alternatives init)"

Or you can initialize a long-lived user-level setup:

# run this once
$ eval "$( my-alternatives init ~/my-alts )"

# place this in your startup scripts
$ eval "$( my-alternatives shellenv ~/my-alts )"

Once configured, setting up a user-local alternative is as easy as:

# equivalent to 'update-alternatives --config <name>'
$ my-alternatives config <name>

NOTE: At the time of this posting, my-alternatives was just released. As such, only init and config logic has been built. Other features will come later.