relocatable packages ?

[David Kewley]

On Tuesday 21 June 2005 21:33, seth vidal wrote:
> > Before fhs (or at least before I knew about) Dad, a long time Uni
> > (Berkeley) programmer/sys admin (mostly AIX/Solaris) - explained it
> > to me this way:
> >
> > Vendor packages: /usr
> > Third party packages - fully contained in /opt/vendor/package (with
> > symlinks in /usr/local/bin and /usr/local/man)
> > local compiled: /usr/local
>
> Here's how I view the world:
> /usr/local - should have NOTHING in it and especially nothing that's
> mananged by rpm. And if you have any programs installed on your
> system that's NOT managed by rpm then you've got a problem  right
> there.
>
> /opt - all the big binary-only crap you get from 3rd party vendors.
>
> /usr - distribution provided and package managed software - imo  this
> translates into: distribution provided, package managed and open
> source software.

I basically do what Seth does.  Occasionally I'll use /usr/local for 
e.g. plopping down a simple one-file application that I don't want to 
bother to package (shmux comes to mind, although Dag makes an rpm for 
it).

Also like Seth, I try hard to have all software managed by rpm, but I 
don't consider it terrible if I break that rule when I judge the 
balance of [later confusion vs. current convenience/urgency] to warrant 
it.

Many of my colleagues don't share the "rpm everything" philosophy.

There are of course lots of vendor etc. packages that don't play very 
nice with the /usr tree or with rpm specfile writing.  If I have time & 
motivation, I write the specfile to force them into the /usr structure.  
Otherwise I dump them in /opt/name-version with e.g. scripts 
in /etc/profile.d/ to put executables & man pages in the path.

One package I shoehorned into /usr: gm, the (now older) driver for 
Myrinet networks.  I have one specfile that makes the gm and 
kernel-module-gm packages.  Writing the specfile & patching the Myricom 
build tools to suit rpm & fhs took a few days of work...  Others have 
taken the easier route of dumping it into /opt/gm-version, and I can't 
say I blame them.

David