Re: I'm sorry to open another can of worms but.. /usr/share/man transition

[Jean Pierre LeJacq <jplejacq@quoininc.com>]

On 5 Aug 1999, Chris Waters wrote:

> Laurent Martelli <martelli@iie.cnam.fr> writes:
> 
> > My very personal opinion about all this, is that we need more
> > abstraction : packages _should_not_ hardcode installation paths. I
> > think that it should be an option that the sysadmin should be able to
> > change anytime, without having to rebuild all packages. 
> 
> I think this is a great idea in concept.  I think implementation may
> be a bit tricky, though, and I'd hate to have to rely on this as a
> short term solution.  But long term, yes, I would enthusiastically
> support such an idea, or some reasonable subset, if it were well
> thought out.  Now all we need is a *workable* proposal or six.  :-)

I've implemented this idea at build time for the packages I
maintain to allow support for placing the packages either in the
standard Debian directory hierarchy or the /opt, /etc/opt,
/var/opt structure.  This involved: 1) defining the directory
structure for both Debian and the package; and 2) parameterizing the
build on the directory structure.  This adds an additional layer of
abstraction to the build process.

Providing the parameterization at install time would be
substantially more difficult.  For example, the wn http server I
maintain hardcodes several paths into its executables.

-- 
Jean Pierre