On Thu, Jan 17, 2002 at 05:09:54PM +0200, Eray Ozkural (exa) wrote:
> 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".
I've explicitly stated my other reservations about /opt several times
when you say this, but you just don't get the point.
/opt sucks.
/opt has not been used by any other Debian package to date afaik.
/opt does not exist in a default debian installation, afaik.
/opt is for "add-on" software. kde is not an "add-on". we package it as
part of the distribution, it's not added on.
> 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.
Yes, you too can clutter /opt with one subdir per package! WHOO!
> 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.
Yes. Absolutely.
> > 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.
And binaries in /opt/kde3/bin? And /opt/apache/bin? And ... you get the
point. How large do you want $PATH to be? And before you can say
"symlink", we can't screw around with /opt/bin, either. And providing
one wrapper script for every binary is MESSY, and SUCKS imho. How many
KDE binaries are there? The answer is: $toomany.
> Please send replies to debian-kde too, or Cc: me.
Please don't Cc: me on any Debian posts any more as I'm honestly not
interested.
--
Daniel Stone <daniel@sfarc.net>
<CheezH> Subject: ssh: shit is fucked
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