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

[From: Matan Ziv-Av]

On Thu, 10 Sep 2009, Mohammed Hassan wrote:

> On Thu, 2009-09-10 at 08:48 +0200, ext Matan Ziv-Av wrote:
>> 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.
>
> And that indication is already a packaging difference.

But such a packaging difference leaves a package compatible with OS2008, 
while moving some files to /opt might not be.

> I'd rather do ./configure --prefix=/opt/<package> and that's it.

That means two packages needed - one for fremantle and one for OS2008, 
while in many cases it could be unnecessary.



-- 
Matan.