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

[From: Tim Teulings]

Hello!

>> 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.

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.

I would kindly request a solution that:
* Either changes packages automatically by the autobuilder. A
functionality that seems in principle available. I have no problem with
explicitely activating this feature from within the package if the
trigger is for example an additional marker file that is ignored by
earlier versions (and can be evaluated by Mer any time).
* If a simple trigger ("Use /opt!") is not sufficient because the
underlying algorithm is not good enough I also have no problem with an
additional file that states (sub)directories that do not need to be
placed under /usr and then can be switched in the package scripts by
maemo-optify.

Currently I place data like icons, images etc... under /usr/share/...
using configures "$(pkgdatadir)" to hand over a compile time define to
the application do be used as search path for application data. With he
requested move of application  (and/or application data), will such a
define still work? Will maemo-optify exchange the call to configure to
explicitely set the non-default position of the package data dir to
/opt/<something>...?

Will it exchange
configure --prefix=/usr

with

configure --prefix=/opt

or something like

configure --prefix=/usr --datadir=/opt

(not sure if this is --datadir or --datarootdir...? Currently it does
use links to fix this (so it should work without patching "rules"), but
it looks like using links is under discussion, too :-/

If not, we are to different packaging anyway I fear...

-- 
Gruß...
       Tim