Re: [kde] setting an /opt precedent
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1
Greetings Frank,
On Thursday 17 January 2002 21:32, Frank Murphy wrote:
> On Thursday 17 January 2002 07:04 pm, Junichi Uekawa wrote:
> > It might be nice to add this bit of policy to Debian Policy
> > so that people do not start mucking around with /opt.
>
> This is a good idea. I understand and whole-heartedly agree with the
> reasons behind Debian not mucking about with /opt, but looking at the
> quoted parts of the FHS, it isn't clear that distributions may not
> install packages into /opt. Adding it to Policy would clarify that.
>
So, what are the "reasons behind Debian not mucking about with /opt" except
the preconceptions of some developers? I think you would have to say
something like:
* It is not very consistent with the directory layout many packages adapt
Is there any other reason? I assume none, since front end files can be placed
by the distribution in usual locations by symlinking or by wrapper scripts.
There is an _invalid_ reason which I had to iterate over and over again:
* /opt is reserved for system administrator's use.
NO! Certain subdirectories of /opt are reserved for local system admin. The
rest of /opt can be used by the distribution, as explained in FHS with a
language that a high school student can easily understand.
Actually the FHS permits use of /opt by distributions you mean. Please add it
to the policy if you have a logical rationale but then we will have to drop
"FHS compliance" from the list of Debian's features. ;)
Aside from discussion of /opt policy in FHS:
Note that the mere suggestion of putting KDE files in /opt/kde3 was because
the above reason is not valid for KDE since it is quite different from the
majority of software packages which are smaller pieces of software designed
according to GNU Coding Standards. As a matter of fact, KDE also obeys GNU
Coding Standards to some extent but it is a very large system and therefore
many kde developers feel that it deserves its own directory; somewhat like
X11. That's all.
Regards,
- --
Eray Ozkural (exa) <erayo@cs.bilkent.edu.tr>
Comp. Sci. Dept., Bilkent University, Ankara
www: http://www.cs.bilkent.edu.tr/~erayo
GPG public key fingerprint: 360C 852F 88B0 A745 F31B EA0F 7C07 AE16 874D 539C
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.0.6 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: For info see http://www.gnupg.org
iD8DBQE8RypnfAeuFodNU5wRAmTsAKCLD2+abQdhjmIAs7aWbtuY5WU2CwCeN86q
DqfakVW1jsmex4rj8Cp/NoQ=
=+asl
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
Reply to: