Re: [kde] setting an /opt precedent
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On Thursday 17 January 2002 16:21, Daniel Stone wrote:
> You might note the discussion on debian-kde of late, where Eray is
> attempting to set a precedent by installing KDE3 into /opt/kde3. Let me
> first disclose my viewpoint: I think this idea sucks, as you can clearly
> see from my postings.
>
The answer I got when I asked "Why isn't /opt used in Debian ?" has always
been "/opt violates Debian Policy".
However on James's message, I read the section and saw that there is no such
thing in neither the policy nor FHS. I'm only saying that installing packages
in /opt doesn't seem to violate the FHS in any way. As I explained in my
messages, "/opt violates Debian Policy" seems to depend on a certain
assumption that "add-on" means "non-free software supplied by third party
commercial vendors" whereas in the text of the FHS there is no such
implication. On the contrary it says distributions can install software in
/opt, just not touch a few reserved subdirs of /opt.
However, using /opt may not be a good path to follow for most free software.
I understand that as well as you do, especially for software following GNU
Coding Standards it is absolutely unnecessary.
> My main concern is that we'll set a precedent here in Debian for this
> sort of behaviour. AFAIK no Debian package has ever touched /opt; in
> fact I'm pretty sure it doesn't even exist on a default install.
>
> So, please read the thread and state your opinions. I know it's a KDE
> issue, but I feel it affects Debian as a whole, since putting something
> in /opt ("SuSE and RedHat do it, so it *must* be good!"), would set a
> major precedent for Debian.
Actually Red Hat doesn't do it that way. Red Hat for instance uses
- --prefix=/usr for their KDE packages in 7.2.
SuSE uses /opt, and they claim to be FHS compliant of course. I haven't had
the opportunity to examine either of the systems (I've never used a Red Hat
or SuSE system), however that was what other KDE coders told me.
One thing to discuss here would be whether FHS is right about that issue or
not. So feel free to send patches to FHS :)
Except that, it seems to be in "violation of FHS" to not support reserved
subdirs of /opt intended for local administrator's use, such as /opt/bin and
/opt/lib. They should exist on a default install, and binaries in /opt/bin
should be in $PATH, etc.
Please send replies to debian-kde too, or Cc: me.
Thanks,
- --
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
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