[maemo-developers] Considering /opt and MyDocs in your packages

[From: Andrew Flegg]

[I haven't got Matan's original]

On Wed, Sep 9, 2009 at 23:41, David Greaves <david at dgreaves.com> wrote:
> Matan Ziv-Av wrote:
>> On Wed, 9 Sep 2009, Andrew Flegg wrote:
>>>   * Use of /opt is perhaps now a QA requirement for Extras
>>>   * Can we somehow add a /opt check into minimae/maemian? Is it
>>>     possible, and is it sensible?
>>
>> Please recall that maemo5 is not the only maemo. Maemo4 is the latest
>> availble for N800/N810 and maemo2 is the latest officailly available on
>> 770. Many packages can compile from same source for all versions. Don't
>> add artificial obstacles to force developers to make their packages
>> incompatible with older versions.

In terms of QA, Fremantle Extras is the only one which has a formal QA
structure. In terms of using /opt on Diablo, I actually think this
could be a good thing: it is effectively a no-op in the default case,
but gives power-users a way of partitioning (or using a loop device)
the internal MMC and mounting it at /opt to gain more application
space. Diablo suffers from the same issue in terms of limited rootfs
space, and the only real solution available to people has been "boot
from card" - that's using a sledgehammer to crack a nut.

> *cough*   Mer    *cough*

Mer's more interesting and since it usually is installed alongside the
base OS, hasn't had to face a similar issue yet. Of course, a *clean*
use of /opt wouldn't hurt Mer[1], would it?

Cheers,

Andrew

[1] I don't consider the symlinks created by maemo-optify "clean".
    "Clean" would be a package which is entirely designed to be
    installed and run from /opt/_package_ with a few small files
    put in /usr/share/applications/hildon, /usr/lib/dbus-1/services,
    /usr/share/icons, and a symlink or wrapper shell script in
    /usr/bin.

-- 
Andrew Flegg -- mailto:andrew at bleb.org  |  http://www.bleb.org/
Maemo Community Council chair