Re: KDE filesystem structure
On Tue, 15 Jan 2002, Eray Ozkural (exa) wrote:
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> On Tuesday 15 January 2002 22:55, James Thorniley wrote:
> >
> > So I'm afraid it's wrong to say a move to /opt/kde violates debian policy,
> > since it's in accordance with FHS.
> >
> > I'm supported also by Mosfet, see www.mosfet.org/fss.html for an actual
> > argument for why directory layout should be more logical.
> >
>
> We know that FHS allows it,
Read carefully what the FHS says. (You can find a copy in the
debian-policy package.) According to section 3.8 /opt is for third-party
addons. If KDE is packaged for Debian by Debian developers it is not an
addon and _does_not_ belong in /opt.
> that's why many RPM's have files in /opt.
Ha! RPMs tend to spew files all over the place. Hardly relevant.
> I have
> some non-free packages such as icc that installs itself in /opt/intel. I'm
> ABSOLUTELY sure that intel's build and release engineers are smart enough to
> interpret FHS correctly (unlike some other people).
It's not a question of non-free but third-party. Is icc part of any
distribution? No. So it belongs in /opt. Were it to be packaged for
Debian (or SuSe etc. if they gave a damn) it would have to go into
/usr/bin, /usr/lib etc.
On my computer things like Loki games, VMware, WordPerfect, are installed
in /opt. But .debs even if they are of things I haven't contributed to
Debian and never will, follow Debian policy and are in /usr.
> It's actually a pretty
> good idea, because the subsystem for a whole software package is defined very
> well under /opt.
As it is under /usr.
> You just put the front end in /opt/bin. Very well. To comply
> with the debian policy some symlinks would have to be made, that's all.
>
Also note the FHS says that /opt/bin is reserved for the local admin only.
> It looks like /opt/kde3 is the proper choice for KDE after all.
>
Well I hope I've convinced you that it isn't. Should such broken .debs
actually make it into the archive they would get critical bugs almost
immediately.
> I was going to suggest creating /usr/lib/kde3, make this KDE prefix with
> symlinks to whichever directories are appropriate. For instance there would
> be a /usr/share/kde3, and /usr/lib/kde3/share would point to /usr/share/kde3/
Wasn't that Ivans' plan?
>
> However, your quote does imply that redhat, suse, etc. packaging which
> installs in /opt/kde3 is indeed FHS compliant. I wonder who was clueless
> enough to think otherwise upon reading FHS.
I for one. And SuSe Red Hat have never impressed me with their adherence
to standards.
> Note that *everybody* except debian uses /opt/kde3,
If it's not Debian it's CRAP! :-)
Oh and btw, /usr/X11R6 and /usr/games were both UNIX traditions from
before Linux and were grandfathered in to the FHS. They really shouldn't
exist.
--
Jaldhar H. Vyas <jaldhar@debian.org>
It's a girl! See the pictures - http://www.braincells.com/shailaja/
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