Re: Sharing a subdirectory of /usr/share between multiple packages ?
On 08-May-07, 01:28 (CDT), sean finney <seanius@debian.org> wrote:
> On Tue, 2007-05-08 at 09:08 +0900, Charles Plessy wrote:
> > It would make a lot of sense to have them in the same directory, so that
> > the sysadmin can dedicate a partition to this heavy data. We are
> > thinking about something like /usr/share/biodata for instance. In
> > the case the wrappers would directly install data and not generate
> > ad-hoc packages, maybe something in the /var hierachy would be more
> > appropriate. But there is no /var/share... Also I am a bit unsure if the
> > local sysadmin would be allowed to write in...
> >
> > Was there already a similar situation in Debian? What was the solution
> > chosen?
>
> typically /usr/share/foo is for read-only pre-packaged data, so i would
> say /var/lib/foo (or maybe /var/cache/foo) makes more sense. for admins
> who would prefer otherwise you could put the location in a config file i
> suppose?
I don't actually see anything wrong with /usr/share/biodata - it would
presumably all be under the control of either prepackaged data or
downloaded-by-wrappers data, so you won't (shouldn't!) have any naming
conflicts. There's no requirement that /usr contain only pre-packaged
info; most of the wrappers that download binaries (e.g. flash) put them
under /usr.
/var is wrong. The data is read-only and architecture independent.
That's the very definition of /usr/share.
One might make an argument for /usr/local/share/biodata, IFF the
wrappers were run directly by the admin, not as part of installation.
But I can see arguments against it as well.
Steve
--
Steve Greenland
The irony is that Bill Gates claims to be making a stable operating
system and Linus Torvalds claims to be trying to take over the
world. -- seen on the net
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