[csw-maintainers] Shared library placement proposal

[Maciej Bliziński]

2011/2/8 Philip Brown <phil at bolthole.com>:
> 2011/2/8 Maciej Bliziński <maciej at opencsw.org>:
>> 2011/2/8 Philip Brown <phil at bolthole.com>:
>>>
>>> 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 ,
>>
>> No, it isn't.
>
> let me clarify:
>
> "normal, for that software's installation process"

That did not clarify it at all.  Software's installation process is
about putting files into bindir, libdir and others, in the way
prescribed by the arguments of the ./configure script.  Arguments of
the ./configure script come from the maintainer's decisions.
Maintainer's decisions come from their goals, our policy and
maintainer's own technical knowledge.  Our policy^Wstandards define
what the prefix is, and that prefix is /opt/csw.  Using a different
prefix is not, at OpenCSW, normal.

To unpack the concept of prefix, it's really a shortcut, denoting
common base directory for a number of other directories, such as bin,
lib, share and var.  If a piece of software needs to use a different
bin directory, it should change that with --bindir.  But this is a
different discussion, a discussion about supporting multiple versions
of one piece of software, which I want to keep separate from this one.

>>> Plus the issue about keeping "du -k" output consistent within the
>>> program files for a prefix.
>>
>> This issue is considered irrelevant.
>
> You misspelled "Maciej considers this issue irrelevant".
> That does not make the issue universally irrelevant

The issue can be relevant if you make a case for it, and what you've
presented so far in the previous thread, did not help you make your
case.

> I consider your goal of having the physical rather than the symlink,
> in /opt/csw/lib, to be irrelevant to any kind of quality improvement.
> Why is your opinion more important than mine?

I want to keep the symlinks discussion separate from the libraries
discussion.  There are two aspects:

1. The part of the policy saying that libraries should be available
from /opt/csw
2. The part of the policy saying how files can be made available from
a given directory

If you want to talk about the first one, let's talk about the first
one.  If you want to talk about symlinks, let's open a new thread and
talk about when regular files, and when symlinks should be used, any
why.

>>> Perhaps we should not include anything about files vs symlinks in the
>>> proposal.  This can be covered by a separate proposal.  If you care
>>> about this, would you like to put forward a proposal regarding the use
>>> of symlinks?
>>
>>Phil, could you address this paragraph?
>
> I thought I already said that was okay. The trouble is, you keep using
> language in the proposal that mandates having the physical file in
> /opt/csw/lib, and denies using symlinks.
> As far as I can think of, there is no clean simple grammatical
> construct you can use, that covers  "move the file, or make a
> symlink".
> Using the word "move" in the spec, denies the use of sylinks. The
> whole point of symlinking, is to NOT move, but make a reference
> instead.

Please take another look at the revision 2011-02-08 of the document, I
don't think it mandates the use of regular files only.

http://wiki.opencsw.org/proposal:shared-library-placement

Maciej