FreeCalypso > hg > freecalypso-tools
diff PACKAGING @ 435:0a01e1c4ea54
documentation: added some notes about the importance of preserving
our /opt/freecalypso private directory hierarchy
author | Mychaela Falconia <falcon@freecalypso.org> |
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date | Sun, 04 Nov 2018 21:55:19 +0000 (2018-11-04) |
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--- /dev/null Thu Jan 01 00:00:00 1970 +0000 +++ b/PACKAGING Sun Nov 04 21:55:19 2018 +0000 @@ -0,0 +1,56 @@ +It has been brought to the Mother's attention that some people don't like the +way our FC host tools are designed to be installed under /opt/freecalypso as +opposed to some standard location like /usr/local, and that some people have +been patching our Makefiles and code to move our installed binaries (and perhaps +some of the support files as well) to other locations which they like better. + +PLEASE DON'T DO IT, especially if you are making a package or a build or setup +or install script to be used by more than just you. FC host tools are a very +complex package with a lot of interrelations between different tools, many +tools in our suite internally invoke other tools by their /opt/freecalypso/bin +absolute pathnames, some tools are designed to be invoked both by human users +and by other tools (rvinterf is a prime example), and there are many support +files used by various tools. If you try to outsmart the Mother and change the +install location to something other than what I designed it to be, you will +inevitably break something, and you probably won't notice the breakage because +a typical casual user only uses a very small subset of our tools. Furthermore, +if you move the install location, you will certainly break our various +additional tools which are not included in the core FC host tools package but +are meant to be installed on top of it, as all of them expect and require the +/opt/freecalypso directory hierarchy described in doc/opt-freecalypso-tree. + +If your goal is to have our installed binaries accessible with a standard PATH +without adding /opt/freecalypso/bin to it, the correct solution is to list the +binaries installed in /opt/freecalypso/bin and make a symlink to each of these +binaries from /usr/bin or from /usr/local/bin or from wherever you like. Use +symlinks, don't move the binaries themselves! If you move the actual binaries, +you will break those tools which internally invoke other tools, which we do a +lot. + +If you still dislike the whole idea, consider the way Firefox does it: official +release binaries from Mozilla are meant to be installed under /usr/lib/firefox +or /usr/lib/firefox-$VERSION, the stuff inside that directory looks nothing like +FHS, it is private to Firefox just like our /opt/freecalypso directory hierarchy +is private to FreeCalypso, and the user makes one symlink from /usr/bin/firefox +to /usr/lib/firefox-$VERSION/firefox or wherever the full complex package +resides. If you can live with Firefox and other major application packages +having their own non-FHS private directory trees, you can surely live with +FreeCalypso doing the same. + +Why did we make our prefix /opt/freecalypso and not /usr/lib/freecalypso or +/usr/local/freecalypso? Because there are many, many places where the full +absolute pathname needs to be typed, and the location we chose is the shortest +among other sensible options. + +Anyone who is going to make binary packages of our FC host tools (presumably +for use on systems on which compilation from source is difficult) and wishes to +have their packaging officially endorsed by the upstream MUST follow these +guidelines: + +* The complete set of tools and support files MUST be included as if one built + and installed our package from the official source, without omitting or + breaking any part which you might consider unimportant. + +* Everything MUST be installed under /opt/freecalypso exactly as designed by + the Mother; symlinks to binaries under /opt/freecalypso/bin from a more user- + friendly location may optionally be included.