Re: kde and files location
On Fri, 19 Sep 1997, Fabrizio Polacco wrote:
> Christian Schwarz wrote:
> >
> > According to the FHS draft, /opt will be treated like /usr/local :
> > "/opt is reserved for the installation of add-on application software
> > packages". This means: no Debian package may touch /opt.
> >
>
> Humm, the way I read the FHS draft is that the reservation to local
> sysadmin is for populating the dirs in /opt outside the package
> Hierarchy, not for its "use".
>
> This area isn't a duplicate of /usr/local, but is reserved for packages
> coming from third parts (and maybe using their own installation scheme).
> The reservation to the local sysadmin is because, after having
> "put-in-place" the package, he (and not the third party) should install
> symlinks or wrapper scripts to permit access from user's PATH and/or
> space (anyway confined in the /opt hierarchy with only 2 exceptions
> /etc/opt and /var/opt).
You're right. I meant "treated like /usr/local" because now Debian package
should install in /usr/local nor in /opt.
As I understand FSSTND and FHS-draft, /usr/local is for the sysadmin, /opt
is for "third parties" and the rest is for the distribution (our .debs).
> But when the debian maintainer or a local sysadmin use the debian
> package system to install the package coming from the third part, he is
> not only "putting-in-place", but also installing it: thus I say then,
> when creating this type of packages, we should "put" it in /opt and
> create symlinks or wrappers from the part of the file system that we
> control (we can do it _because_ we control it; the same is not allowed
> to externally created packages because they don't control the fs except
> for /opt/<their-package>).
No. Nearly all of our packages are comming from "third parties" and this
would bring everthing to /opt. It's the maintainers job to adapt a program
to "fit in" the Debian GNU/Linux system. These packages should not go into
/opt.
Something different would be for packages (no matter if it's a .deb
or not) coming from someone else. Say a commercial vendor seels his
software together with a simple installation program, the correct location
for this package would be /opt.
If a sysadmin gets some other source code which he/she translates
him/herself, the files should go into /usr/local (or /opt).
> I think that the argument about "who controls what goes where" is the
> right way to solve the triple conflict between OS, sysadmin and program
> supplier, each of which has different goals and ways to look at the file
> system structure (OS thinks in terms of user's namespace, sysadmin in
> terms of shares and mount between all his machine/architectures, and
> program supplier thinks in term of package organization common to _all_
> the OSes he supports)
I agree. I think the seperation is easy (from our point of view): Every
.deb on our ftp server (no matter if "main" or "non-free" or "contrib")
comes from us, not from a third party.
> Thinking this way we could end thinking that packages that doesn't
> belong to Debian should go under /opt (like non-free stuff or packages
> prepared and supplied directly from other sources).
> In fact think of the possibility that someone like corel-draw or
> netscape decide to package their linux port directly also in the debian
> format. We maybe don't like them to "use" our namespace putting for
> example an executable called "man" under /usr/bin.
> But they don't have to follow our-guidelines. Thus FHS tells them that
> they MUST put their things under /opt and the installer (the local
> sysadmin in their words, but I can think of dpkg as the installer)
> chooses the way to "connect" things that _are_ inside of their namespace
> with user's paths and so on.
>
> As the same draft says, if this had been done for X11 from the very
> first moment, we would have now a cleaner /usr space.
>
>
> If you think we should move this to fhs-discuss, I'll follow you.
The situation is clear to me. If you still disagree (and don't want to
discuss it with me and the others here) you can move this discussion to
fhs-discuss, of course.
Thanks,
Chris
-- Christian Schwarz
schwarz@monet.m.isar.de, schwarz@schwarz-online.com,
Debian is looking schwarz@debian.org, schwarz@mathematik.tu-muenchen.de
for a logo! Have a
look at our drafts PGP-fp: 8F 61 EB 6D CF 23 CA D7 34 05 14 5C C8 DC 22 BA
at http://fatman.mathematik.tu-muenchen.de/~schwarz/debian-logo/
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