On Thu, 19 Jan 2012 16:31:50 -0800 (PST) Darrell Anderson humanreadable@yahoo.com wrote:
The solution used by Gentoo for installing KDE3 and KDE4 in parallel was to filter the $PATH variable in startkde by using sed--if the startkde for KDE3 was invoked, KDE4 directories would be filtered out of the path, and vice-versa. That fixes most of the problems you describe (invoking a KDE4 application while running KDE3/Trinity does require the full path to be given, but that's a minor flaw compared to not knowing which app you're going to be getting), although I admit it isn't elegant.
A challenge with that solution is when KDE4 apps are installed in /usr/bin. Tough to filter that location from the $PATH variable. :) I'm curious how that was achieved, unless in Gentoo KDE4 executables are installed someplace unique rather than /usr/bin.
Yes, the installations are made to /usr/kde/[version]/bin under Gentoo... however, doesn't the system search the $PATH directories in order? Placing the Trinity bin directory first should cause its contents to take precedence over what's in /usr/bin if there's a naming conflict, shouldn't it?