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

[From: Andrew Flegg]

On Thu, Sep 10, 2009 at 13:38, Marius Vollmer <marius.vollmer at nokia.com> wrote:
> ext Andrew Flegg <andrew at bleb.org> writes:
>>
>> That changes things, if /opt is going away (in a Maemo Update?) [...]
>
> Careful. :-) The /opt directory itself is of course not becoming illegal
> in some way, and your optified packages will continue to work, in the
> same way as they will work on Diablo, Chinook, etc.

Indeed. However, if /opt is going to be in place for a month or two,
we should make it completely transparent to developers; if that's what
the the replacement (unionfs?) solution would do.

However, in terms of quick wins, I reckon a unionfs solution could be
integrated in time, without a fundamental restructure of Fremantle.
Did you look at those?

> The optification will become pointless, but it will be quite harmless
> forever (except for the forest of symlinks, but I hope that they don't
> cause significant cost).

That's my concern: the forest of symlinks *could* have unforeseen
performance, space usage, (developer) support issues which we won't
encounter until widespread usage of lots of /opt-using applications
make it out to the testers.

Although a unionfs solution would be a bit more further dev on Nokia's
part, it will reduce the developer complexity and gives us a real
world solution now. I'm sure the community would help as well, with
patching/building/testing kernel modules (once again, Nokia should
realise there are clever technical people in the community who could
help design an optimal (= quick & good) solution if engaged at the
right time).

Cheers,

Andrew

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