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

[From: Andrew Flegg]

On Thu, Sep 10, 2009 at 07:10, Tim Teulings <rael at edge.ping.de> wrote:
>
> I also would like to request a solution that does not make packages
> differ from diablo or Mer. Up to now I was able to have the same
> packages for all OS versions. A solution that requires me to have
> different packages for Fremantle and "the rest", where the differences
> are purly textual exchanges of "/usr" with "/opt" (which can possible be
> automated as shown by maemo-optify-deb) creates additional efforts for
> me (and likely other people packaging software). While the reasons for
> this are well argumented and need not to be discussed they have their
> origin in a technical defiency than in a planed architectual or design
> change and thus possibly should be handled by the package.

The use of /opt/_package_/ on Diablo, Fremantle, Mer, Ubuntu is
entirely concordant with the FHS:

    http://www.pathname.com/fhs/pub/fhs-2.3.html#OPTADDONAPPLICATIONSOFTWAREPACKAGES

So, further to my earlier stance, I don't see a problem with building
a package which is /opt aware for all the above platforms. Now,
maemo-optifying a package and using it on other platforms (and even
Maemo) is a hack, so I'd prefer developers used the autoconf approach
of --datadir or similar, with only a few things (startup script,
icons, service files, desktop files) being either directly installed
to /usr (or symlinked to /opt).

Cheers,

Andrew

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