Packaging Guidelines: /opt

[Toshio Kuratomi]

Andy Theuninck wrote:
> I'm trying to put a package together for webmin. It wants to install
> to libexec, but if I do that rpmlint (rightly) complains that there
> are non-executable text files. Perl files & HTML files are intermixed
> and separating them out would be a patching nightmare. With a bit of
> sed scripting, I can coax the whole thing into a different base
> directory.
> 
Separating different types of files and getting upstream to accept the
patches is the right thing to do.

Failing to get buyin from upstream, separating them and symlinking is
acceptable but not encouraged.

This brief section of the guidelines has useful information about where
things might belong in this case::
  http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging/Guidelines#Web_Applications

If you look at moin and other web packages, you'll see that they place a
lot of files into /usr/share, perhaps how you're intending to use /opt.
 However, you do have to make sure you aren't putting executables,
binaries, or files that need to be written there.

> The official packaging guidelines say Fedora follows the Filesystem
> Hierarchy Standard, and as I read FHS /opt would be the most
> appropriate place to dump this mess. If I try to use /opt/webmin
> though, rpmlint pitches a fit about using /opt. Nothing in the
> guidelines says I can't use /opt. Can I just ignore all these errors?
> 

The FHS says: /opt is reserved for the installation of add-on
application software packages.

Anything packaged by Fedora is part of the system packaging rather than
an addon so we stay out of /opt.

> Also, neither the packing guidelines nor FHS make any mention of /var.
> Maybe that's a more appropriate spot.
> 
For some content, yes.  But not for the bulk of it.

The Guidelines section I linked to earlier mentions that /var is not the
place for (most of) these files.

-Toshio

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