Command to install/remove symlink for oc and podman

[guillaumerose]

One big pain with crc is the use of crc oc-env or crc podman-env.
It brings nothing and it will be a good improvement to directly put oc and podman directly in the PATH of the user.

When the crc VM is started, crc could install the symlink. When the VM is stopped, crc could remove (or restore it).
Same for podman.

The admin-helper can do this job:

• one command to install and backup /usr/local/bin/oc symlink.
• one command ro remove and restore the symlink.

[cfergeau]

symlinks from /usr/local to user home dir is a bit weird, what about systems with 2 users, in particular if they want to run different crc versions.
And having crc's oc/podman in the default PATH caused issues in the past, this was the reason for moving oc to its own dir, this was the reason for the podman naming discussion, we need to be careful with this.
crc oc-env is also used to propagate the proxy settings, so we'll still need some -env command in some cases.

[praveenkumar]

I would not recommend it because then we are updating a binary path without user notice it. Assume I have production cluster of version 3.11 or 4.3 so I have my oc binary in the path accordingly but as soon as I use CRC if that changes then my interaction with those cluster break if oc binary is not compatible :(

[guillaumerose]

symlinks from /usr/local to user home dir is a bit weird

Combined with crc-org/crc#2251, oc would come from a shared location.

And having crc's oc/podman in the default PATH caused issues in the past

Maybe we can add an option? If oc is already installed by brew or so, we could say 'please use crc oc-env'.
I understand some people might complain but it solves the issue for 90% of people maybe. At least, on macOS and Windows, crc could come with good defaults.

[cfergeau]

symlinks from /usr/local to user home dir is a bit weird
Combined with crc-org/crc#2251, oc would come from a shared location.

yup, only saw this issue after this one :) On Linux, it would still be installed in the user homedir, which should not block macos/windows improvements, but we also want the experience to be as consistent as possible/easy to document.
~/.local/bin or ~/bin could be used on linux, but I think it was explicitly something we did not want to do in the past.

[gbraad]

it will be a good improvement to directly put oc and podman directly in the PATH of the user.

this would override the users installed binaries and should therefore be an option that can be set from the installer; possible for MSI.