Old Flex version in FC5?

[Bojan Smojver]

John Ellson <ellson <at> research.att.com> writes:

> These tools need extra care when updating.

Absolutely.

Would there be interest in having a flex-reentrant (based on 2.5.33) package in
Extras (in parallel with existing flex) that would install itself in /opt/flex,
as per:

http://www.pathname.com/fhs/pub/fhs-2.3.html#OPTADDONAPPLICATIONSOFTWAREPACKAGES

With such approach, both pieces of software could exist on the system at the
same time without, with the old, proven flex being the default. The reentrant
flex would be completely invisible in terms of binary paths, libraries, man
pages etc., until explicity referenced by other software needing this kind of
functionality.

PS. I'm aware that /opt isn't the most popular choice (*cough* is completely
against policy *cough*) for Fedora [Extras] packages, but in this particular
case it may give us some optional (pun intended :-) functionality that we
otherwise wouldn't have.

--
Bojan