Re: KDE filesystem structure
On Wednesday 16 January 2002 4:44 am, Jaldhar H. Vyas wrote:
> [Eray Ozkural wrote:]
> > that's why many RPM's have files in /opt.
>
> Ha! RPMs tend to spew files all over the place. Hardly relevant.
>
...
> > However, your quote does imply that redhat, suse, etc. packaging which
> > installs in /opt/kde3 is indeed FHS compliant. I wonder who was clueless
> > enough to think otherwise upon reading FHS.
>
> I for one. And SuSe Red Hat have never impressed me with their adherence
> to standards.
>
The fact of the matter is that SuSE and Redhat produce distributions where
their installation of KDE is compatible with an installation from source of
KDE from ftp.kde.org. In debian, for some reason, all the docs have been
moved from [kde-prefix]/share/doc/HTML/<language>/<packagename> to
[kde-prefix]/share/doc/kde/HTML/<language>/<packagename>. This makes it
virtually impossible to produce a source distribution of a KDE app which is
compatible with all GNU/Linux distributions (unless you're in the mood for
messing about with the hell-on-earth that is automake macros, not to mention
I don't see why I should have to deviate from the standard automake macros
provided by KDE, since they work for every other distribution). In fact, once
I work out who is maintaining KDE3, that's all I will be asking them to do -
mimic that standard kde directory layout under the prefix of their choice - I
don't mind if it's still in /usr (it's just not ideal to me). If I was the
maintainer, I would move it, but I'm not going to ask someone else to put up
with the flames and the bug reports.
> Oh and btw, /usr/X11R6 and /usr/games were both UNIX traditions from
> before Linux and were grandfathered in to the FHS. They really shouldn't
> exist.
Interesting you note this, since this kind of logical directory layout is of
course the traditional UNIX way. The FHS rather goes against traditional UNIX
thinking that most old sysadmins are happy with (see the Mosfet artical
again. www.mosfet.org/fss.html). I also happen to think that the consensus
from all other GNU/Linux distributions does add some weight - whether it's
truly standards compliant, they've all thought about it as a team of
developers and have come up with the same answer, and they're not stupid.
Yours,
James
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