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

[From: Matan Ziv-Av]

On Thu, 10 Sep 2009, David Weinehall wrote:

> On ons, 2009-09-09 at 23:48 +0200, ext Matan Ziv-Av wrote:
>> On Wed, 9 Sep 2009, Andrew Flegg wrote:
>>
>>> On Wed, Sep 9, 2009 at 16:22, Attila Csipa<maemo at csipa.in.rs> wrote:
>>>> On Wednesday 09 September 2009 17:09:17 Andrew Flegg wrote:
>>>>> Of course, if maemo-optify were really clever, it'd also handle
>>>>> patterns like the above and produce "/opt/bob/share/foo", but I'd
>>>>> consider this an optional enhancement.
>>>>
>>>> I wonder if optification could be done on the level of the
>>>> autobuilder... In that case most developers wouldn't even need to think
>>>> about it (and/or mess it up :) at all.
>>>
>>> There was a strong feeling on #maemo (and one I agree with) that the
>>> auto-builder shouldn't be changing things in an uploaded package.
>>>
>>> Other thoughts included:
>>>
>>>   * 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.
>
> It's not an artificial obstacle, it's a way to work around the sad
> reality that VFAT is a.) de facto standard, b.) a seriously useless file
> system, c.) most users are unable to cope with better alternatives.
>
> But by all means, if you think this is an artificial obstacle, please
> suggest alternative solutions; we'd be very thankful if you can come up
> with any solution we might've missed.

A simple solution is to let the installer handle this in a similar manner 
to the way doc files are removed after installation. You need: a script 
that runs after a package is installed and moves+sym links whatever it 
decides are big files or directories to some other location. You might 
want to allow package to indicate that some files should not be moved. 
Such an indication will be ignored by OS not running this script, thus 
allowing the package to be installed on multiple versions of operating 
system.


-- 
Matan.