[Fedora-packaging] The role of %{_libexecdir} for using environment-modules

[Jussi Lehtola]

On Tue, 2008-10-07 at 21:15 -0400, Ed Hill wrote:
> Hi folks,
> 
> *Please* stop suggesting alternatives.
> 
> Alternatives is a total failure for user-space applications that are
> not *completely* generic and 100% interchangeable.  Lets illustrate
> this point with three use cases:
>
> Please notice that modules (aka "environment modules") is a perfectly
> workable solution for all the above scenarios and it does not require
> any help from an admin (or root/sudo perms).


Exactly. Now the question still remains where to hide these. OpenMPI
puts its wrappers in /usr/share/openmpi, but /usr/share is for
architecture independent data.

Since /usr/bin doesn't have any subdirectories to me it seems quite
straightforward to use /usr/libexec/%{name} to "hide" the binaries. They
are then automatically added to the path upon loading the module.

My interpretation is that this is OK according to the Packaging
guidelines: "Libexecdir (aka, /usr/libexec on Fedora systems) should be
used as the directory for executable programs that are designed
primarily to be run by other programs rather than by users."

Alternatives are out of the question: at the moment, there are 184
belonging to the package. Also the users of the software are quite
probably used to environment-modules, since they've been standard
equipment on supercomputers for a long time.
-- 
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Jussi Lehtola, FM, Tohtorikoulutettava
Fysiikan laitos, Helsingin Yliopisto
jussi.lehtola at helsinki.fi, p. 191 50623
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Mr. Jussi Lehtola, M. Sc., Doctoral Student
Department of Physics, University of Helsinki, Finland
jussi.lehtola at helsinki.fi
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