AW: Debian Vim Scripts Policy proposal
Hi guys,
firstly, I think it's great that you're tackling this sort of thing. If
there's one thing I hate it's the way software get's installed - even today
I know of no system that get's it just right (and I'm even using Mac OS X
:-).
That said, I have the feeling that you're jumping to the specification and
implementation without checking the requirements first. Your policy states
where things are to go, but hardly refers to a problem trying to be fixed.
Personally I live in a twilight zone between (effectively) single user and
multi-user systems. For single user systems it should be possible for the
main user to simply install and de-install software, and of course to
perform updates. On a multi-user system, only a select few should be allowed
to install publically accessable software, but almost everyone should be
able to install software for themselves. (including personal extensions to
applications that they otherwise can't change)
Something else that bothers me is that it's often difficult to have multiple
versions of a peice of software installed on the same machine at the same
time. /usr/local/bin is appalling - /opt/<application>-<version> is much
better - if a new version doesn't work - just go back to using the old one -
total effort == 0. You're vimXY suggestion addresses this - but if I
uninstall vim60 - what happens in /usr/share? That's something that -I- have
to clean up... asuming I think of it.
So what I need is a distinction between, system software (OS only), local
software [1] (applications for general use), local application extensions
(for general use), personal applications and personal application extensions
- and for everything, it should be possible to have as many different
versions of each application as the users require. (Even system software
should be so flexible - which version to use should be 'the latest unless
otherwise configured'.) This distinction isn't a categorisation of the
software being installed, but rather a question of who is doing the
installation and for what purpose. (In this respect, I find the installation
of applications via the 'root' user extremely annoying - it's a security
risk and in most cases completely unnecessary.)
[1] local software can also be split into "local to this machine" and "local
to site"
So, to your suggestion - rather than specifying a directory (/usr/share/vim)
where vim's scripts should go, please specify an overall structure for any
application - and then modify vim as necessary to meet those requirements.
The key word here being "requirements" - what should be possible? what
should be discouraged? what should not be possible? What are the benefits of
splitting the files of an application into "external" directories like
/usr/share? what problems arise? What happens when things go wrong? How
difficult is it uninstall software? (including unwanted vim scripts!) What
would a normal user have to do to install a vim script for himself? What
about non-unix environments? They will have the same problems but will
probably require a different solution (try to find /usr/share on a M$
machine hahahahaha)... If you specify what is required, then the solution
can be found at a higher level and then applied to any system and any
application. It could be that /usr/share/vim becomes the standardised
installation directory for locally installed vim scripts - but realistically
this should be left flexible enough so that the admin can chose to do
something different (ie: he might have an NFS directory for platform
independant scripts, why should he be forced to update every system because
someone said "/usr/share/vim is where they go"?)
Apple has gone a long way in this respect - the idea of an application being
a single, location independant(!), directory containing everything that the
application needs is something that appeals to me greatly, add to that a
small group of well defined personalisation directories on a system-wide and
user basis (/Library, /System/Library and ~/Library) and you've got
something that works for all applications, in a consistent manner, which is
easy to understand, manage and automate.
If you can convince the debian (suse, red hat, ....) people to do an
analysis allong these lines and reach a consesus so that software can be
installed in a standard but flexible way on such platforms, it would be a
great thing for everyone (developers, admins, users). The different types of
installation (system, local, personal) only really differ in the location of
the software - it could even be automated to the point that if the software
was installed as root, the system directories would be used, if the user has
write access to the local directories (ie: a user called 'local', or even
one called 'vim' which can only update the vim installations) then the local
directories would be used, and if all else fails, every user can install
software in their personal directories.
I hope you view this as constructive criticism and not just a rant - I've
been managing software in /usr/local site-wide for years and putting
together and keeping track of software installations on unix machines is not
a fun task. Sorry but I couldn't let this chance go by :-)
Cheers,
Steve
--
-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: Jakub Turski [mailto:yacoob@chruptak.plukwa.net]
Gesendet: Freitag, 18. Juli 2003 13:20
An: VIM Mailing list; debian-policy@lists.debian.org
Betreff: Debian Vim Scripts Policy proposal
Greetings.
Together with Artur Czechowski, we've created a proposition of possible
Debian
Vim Scripts Policy. At the moment Debian introduces only vim-scripts and
vim-latexsuite but we think that problems which have risen during assembly
of
vim-latexsuite should be addresed in a form of policy for others maintainers
willing to package vim scripts.
The current draft of the policy could be found at:
http://yacoob.dnsalias.net/sakwa/vim-policy.txt
Please mail us our suggestions and thoughts about it. We'd like this policy
to
become a part of Debian Policy set of documents. So far, maintainers of
'cream'
package and 'vim-scripts' package have spoke in favour of this document.
We're
still waiting for the opinion from 'vim' package maintainer.
This message has been sent to both Vim mailing list and debian-policy
mailing
list.
Regards,
Jakub Turski.
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