Re: Disable b2sum from coreutils?

[Kaz Kylheku (Coreutils)]

On 2020-07-01 22:18, Jeffrey Walton wrote:
> Hi Everyone,
>
> The BLAKE2 folks have optimized implementations for b2sum on i686,
> x86_64, NEON and PowerPC. It also has more options than the coreutils
> version.
>
> I'd like to disable b2sum in coreutils and use the BLAKE2 team's 
> version.

This is a job for your open source system distribution.

The approach taken on some distros is to build every package normally.
If two or more packages provide the same executable, there is a 
mechanism
in place to choose which one is installed.

It may be that all are installed, but under an altered name like say
"/usr/bin/b2sum.coreutils" and "/usr/bin/b2sum.blake2". Then the 
resolution
system chooses one of these as the target of a /usr/bin/bsum2
symbolic link.

The renaming and symlinking are done outside of the build systems of the
programs; they are arranged by the distro build system.

The distro build system redirects the "make install" of a package into
a temporary install directory which is for that package only. Then the
installed materials are further manipulated. For instance, the materials
may be split into development, run-time and documentation parts, which
become separate packages. It is at this stage that clashing executable
might be renamed.

The virtue of this system is that the end user has a way to choose which
binary dominates, without the upstream packages having to be rebuilt;
all the packages have all the binaries.

I think pretty much any major distro has a way to do this; find out how
yours is doing it.

If you're building your own local package from sources (like say blake2)
and would like its b2sum to be used instead of the one in /usr/bin,
then simply make sure that /usr/local/bin is ahead of /usr/bin in
your PATH.