SUMMARY - "goals" for slink: FHS
I figured my post would start a discussion, and it certainly did. I
think it is time to summarize part of it, so maybe we can reach a
consensus. I'll do it in the "plus/minus/interesting" format
suggested by Edward de Bono [1].
The problem, you may recall, is that the FHS calls for documentation
to go into /usr/share/{man,info,doc} instead of /usr/{man,info,doc}.
How should Debian implement this?
My original idea was this (but I now prefer 1.1 below):
1. Upgrade first browsers then individual packages.
1. Change the policy
2. Modify the man and info readers
3. Modify install-info
4. Modify debhelper and debmake
5. Ask developers to change their packages
6. Modify lintian to issue a warning
7. (much later) Change the lintian warning to an error.
Pluses:
Incremental. No massive file move.
Old and new packages coexist.
Minuses:
Coordinated uploads required: all the packages with browsing
capabilities must be upgraded before any FHS compliant package can
be uploaded.
Coordinated upgrade required: users have to upgrade all the
browsers before installing any new packages.
Raul Miller <rdm@test.legislate.com> then suggested the first of
the symlink ideas:
2. /usr/share -> ..
Make some essential package for slink provide the symlink /usr/share
-> .., and create the real directory only after all the packages are
converted.
Pluses:
Old and new browsers coexist.
Old and new packages coexist.
Minuses:
A massive file move is necessary.
Users cannot install new FHS-compliant packages until they
reorganize their directories.
/usr/share already exists! <---------- fatal flaw
Stephen Zander <gibreel@pobox.com> wrote:
3. /usr/man -> /usr/share/man
Create /usr/share/{info,man}, move all the files to their new
directories, then symlink /usr/{info,man} to the new directories.
Pluses:
Old and new browsers coexist.
Old and new packages coexist.
Minuses:
A massive file move is necessary. "...the upgrade is likely to
be smoother if there [are] not major release boundary
incompatibilities." - Manoj Srivastava <srivasta@acm.org>
Users cannot install new FHS-compliant packages until they
reorganize their directories.
Interesting:
Raul Miller <rdm@test.legislate.com> drafted a "rather
paranoid" script to do the file move.
lee@sectionIV.com (Lee Bradshaw) suggested a variation to my original plan:
1.1 Per-file symlinks
New packages install in /usr/share and install symlinks in old
locations.
Pluses:
Entirely incremental.
Old and new packages, and old and new browsers, all coexist.
Users may install FHS-compliant packages on an otherwise hamm
system.
Minuses:
Large collection of symbolic links may be thought unsightly.
Interesting:
Martin Alonso Soto <masoto@uniandes.edu.co> suggested a tool
create-compat-symlink that would create the links as needed, or
else delete the per-file links and replace them with per-directory
links (e.g. when all the real files were gone from
/usr/man/man1). Apparently all the new packages would have to
depend on the new tool.
lee@sectionIV.com (Lee Bradshaw) prefers that after a certain
date, new packages remove the old symlinks as they are installed.
Other Points
We should not lose track of these non-controversial (IMHO) points
which came up in the discussion:
...for programs like dhelp and dwww we have to change the
webstandard. http://localhost/doc should point to /usr/share/doc.
Marco.Budde@hqsys.antar.com (Marco Budde)
info and man browsers must have /usr/share/* added to their default
paths - it is not enough to just change MANPATH and INFOPATH.
Section 3.9 of the policy: "No program may depend on
environment variables to get reasonable defaults."
Candidate list of "browsers" to be updated: analog auto-pgp debhelper
debmake dpkg-dev elvis emacs19 gnome-core gs-aladdin info ispell
lintian man-db pgp-i pgp-us tcsh tkinfo tkman util-linux webmagick
Raul Miller <rdm@test.legislate.com>
BTW: Did somebody notice that /usr/doc/<package>/examples sometimes
contain binary executables? If we change from /usr/doc to /usr/share/doc,
we would have to move those examples somewhere else...
Santiago Vila <sanvila@unex.es>
- Jim Van Zandt
[1] "de Bono's Thinking Course", Facts on File, Inc., New York NY,
ISBN 0-8160-1895-2. Highly recommended.
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