[Fedora-packaging] Mono Packaging Issues

[Ian Burrell]

On 6/12/06, Paul <paul at all-the-johnsons.co.uk> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> > 1. Redefining libdir for mono packages:
> >
> > If mono and its tools cannot find a library on a 64bit architecture when
> > it lives in %{_libdir} (/usr/lib64), then mono is fundamentally broken
> > on that architecture, and needs to be fixed. This is a serious flaw, and
> > I will not have us doing ugly hacks in spec files to work around mono's
> > ineptitude. Every other core component is able to handle this, this bug
> > should be filed and fixed.
>
> I've moaned about this until I'm blue in the face on the mono-devel
> lists for almost 8 months now (basically since I moved to 64 bit
> architecture) and there doesn't seem to be any real desire to do
> anything.
>
> I think the problem has been disguised by how SuSE package mono
> applications. In their somewhat insane spec files, they define all mono
> packages as being noarch, which means everything goes into /usr/lib
> rather than anywhere else.
>
> This, to me, is as bad a hack as my libdir one.
>
> I have a feeling that the only way it will get fixed is if one of us
> sits down and fixes the problem. It could possibly be just a quick
> change to the configure.ac scripts so that /usr/lib is set as libdir in
> there.
>

It sounds like what is needed is another variable which determines
where the arch-independent code for mono goes.  libdir would have its
normal arch-dependent meaning, /usr/lib or /usr/lib64.  The new
variable, lets call it monodir for example, would always be
/usr/lib/mono.

There will always be packages which use libdir for installing shared
libraries and mono code and using libdir for both purposes will always
create problems.

 - Ian