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

[From: Marius Vollmer]

ext Martin Grimme <martin.grimme at gmail.com> writes:

> I don't think /opt/<package> is a bad idea, and I wouldn't call it a
> hack. On other Unices, like Solaris, 3rd party software usually goes
> to /opt. In fact, by default, /usr is write-protected in virtual
> containers (mounted read-only from the host system).

I like to see Maemo as a traditional, all-inclusive distribution.  As
such, the stuff in Maemo Extras is as 1st party as any other package.

(True, some package are more equal than others, such as the OS
meta-packages, and some repositories are also more equal than others,
such as the System Software Updates repo, but these things are not
really "Us vs You".)

> The good thing IMHO about /opt is that all stuff resides in one place,
> not being scattered all across the filesystem.

That's just on the surface.  If you have a reasonable package management
system, it doesn't make any difference either way.  I do agree that the
traditional Unix filesystem layout is not very clean, but it is also not
broken and I don't want to try to fix anything about it within this
excersize of finding more space for applications.

> When looking at Solaris, you can find directories like "lib" and "bin"
> inside /opt/<package>/. This way it's also possible for programs to
> bring in libraries that would otherwise break or mess up the root
> system.

They can do this without /opt as well, of course.

> LD_LIBRARY_PATH, etc. can be setup by the start scripts of the
> programs accordingly. I'm all for keeping the root system clean of 3rd
> party stuff.

Knock yourself out, I am not stopping you. :-) But I also don't want
to make this optification any more complex than it needs to be, for the
sake of something non-trivial and fuzzy as cleaning up the Unix
filesystem layout.