Configuring Alternative Packages in Fedora

In this world of multiple Javas and other packages, and Debian created the alternative system to make it easy to pick which implementation of of a package should be selected. Though the man page is helpful Chris Taylor's Wednesday Why gives a succinct explanation of why Fedora adopted this technology.

Most of the time to set up an alternative do the following command:

sudo alternatives --install

For example if I have jdk1.6.0_21 & jdk1.6.0_23 installed and I want to use the latter's compiler I would do,

sudo alternatives --verbose --install /usr/bin/javac javac /usr/java/jdk1.6.0_23/bin/javac 16023

That way if jdk1.60.21's files are untouched by the symlink /usr/bin/javac now points to /usr/java/jdk

From what I have read so far alternatives is a good way of managing symlinks on your system.

Wporta shows how to install and configure Java for a 64 bit system. I might write a bash script to automate this configuration if there is a need. Another good resource is here.