Re: New package netgen-lvs with binary /usr/bin/netgen - already taken

[Ruben Undheim <lists@beebeetle.com>]

Hi,


After now having seen many arguments (this thread became longer than
anticipated) for both changing the policy and for keeping it the way it is, I
am now quite convinced that the policy should be the way it is!

> > stupid idea:
> > 
> > do these scripts (and other consumers of the netgen binaries) actually
> > use the fully qualified "/usr/bin/netgen" or just an unqualified "netgen"?
> > 
> > if the latter, you might just put the unchanged names into something
> > like /usr/share/netgen/bin/ and tell users to add to that to their PATH
> > when running their scripts.
> > that provides a simple compat layer for out-of-distro scripts.
> > rdeps in Debian should be patched to use debianized script-names.

For netgen-lvs, I will just put the binary using the upstream name in
  /usr/lib/netgen-lvs/bin
There will be a symlink in /usr/bin/netgen-lvs pointing to
/usr/lib/netgen-lvs/bin/netgen


Actually just putting a note in README.Debian saying something like this...

  If you would like to use netgen-lvs with the upstream name "netgen",
  set the PATH environment variable to  PATH=/usr/lib/netgen-lvs/bin:$PATH

  To permanently enable the upstream binary name "netgen" for a user, you can
  for example add the following to the shell startup source file (~/.bashrc,
  ~/.zshrc ..):

    export PATH=/usr/lib/netgen-lvs/bin:$PATH

  ...


should solve the problem.

This way, we do not globally mess up the namespace for the system. It will
only apply for specific users (root is not affected if not explicitly touched,
and hence not system scripts).

It makes it easy to see exceptions (echo $PATH), and we do not have to waste
time making "ugly" compatibility packages.

At the same time, the user will be encouraged to use the Debian name for the
executable if possible.


I guess the "long description" for the package can also refer to README.Debian
for how to handle the "issue", to make the user aware of it even before
installing it.


This may even be good enough for more complicated cases such as nodejs (was)?

Thanks IOhannes for the suggestion..


Best regards,
Ruben