[csw-maintainers] Shared library placement proposal

[Jonathan Craig]

On Mon, Feb 7, 2011 at 11:07 PM, Philip Brown <phil at bolthole.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 7, 2011 at 7:25 PM, Ben Walton <bwalton at opencsw.org> wrote:
>>
>> My preference, as the whole point of this proposal is to have more
>> libraries available in /opt/csw/lib, is to prefer the files to be
>> placed in /opt/csw/lib and the symlinks (if any) to be in
>> /opt/csw/special/lib/.
>>
>> Does anyone think this should be the opposite by default?
>
> yes. I've already written this, AND I've already written why.
> Because that is the "normal" way that programs install things, when
> you compile with
>  configure --prefix=/opt/csw/prefix
>
> That is the "normal" location ,therefore that should be the "real" location.
> This is consistent with standard behaviour. For example,
> /usr/openwin/lib. that is/was the "real" location of the libX11
> libraries, but for convenience, symlinks were made from other
> locations pointing to there.
> We are in the same situation. We basically want a reference in
> /opt/csw/lib, for convenience.
>

I concur.  Libraries should be placed in their package specific
subdirectory as the package install would have it.  For convenience, a
symlink from our global library directory (/opt/cw/lib) should be made
to the actual file.

The primary reason being that this allows easier integration of
multiple versions.  If you reverse this and force the actual library
into /opt/csw/lib then you will have to move this library to its
package/versioned subdirectory before overwriting.  This would be a
logistical nightmare.

As to libraries with SONAME collisions I don't know whether its better
to not create any symlinks or always create symlinks to the newest
version (or possibly last installed).  Its a coin toss between
problems finding libraries during builds and the possibility that
you'll break an existing application by installing a newer version of
the library.  Having said that, I guess I would lean towards
operational stability and not create any symlinks.