Modifying Debian for Infrastructures--Step 1
For installing packages on a cluster of machines, we chose to install
to a globally visible filesystem. There are directory subtrees for
different versions of the same package and for different
architectures. The individual machines use sym-link farms (created
with slink or stow) to run these packages. In a first step we would
like to modify source packages such that the installation directories
become parametrized and choosable at build time as a command line
option.
Our current ideas are:
o The debian source package already standardized what goes where.
o Different versions of Debian may have different layouts--but
that's predictable.
o We believe that using SED or similar to substitute all
/usr/bin, /etc, /usr/doc/, etc with some kind of a variable
would be the right approach. This makes it irrelevant
whether a certain path is coded in Makefile, a Makefile.in,
a c source file, or whatever else.
o The only caveat we could think off was quoted slashes
"\/usr\/bin" and path that are constructed from multiple
variables. The former case could possibly be automated; we
don't see a solution for the latter.
o We write a simple wrapper around the build tool that adds a first
step that substitutes all the above variables to the path
specified on the command line.
We would greatly appreciate any help with the following questions:
o will this approach work? Is there something we didn't think of?
o which are the path that have to be substituted? Where is the
Debian doc that lists them all?
Many thanks
-- bud
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| Bud P. Bruegger, Ph.D. | mailto:bud@sistema.it |
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