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

[Dominik 'Rathann' Mierzejewski]

On Wednesday, 08 October 2008 at 20:59, Toshio Kuratomi wrote:
> Rex Dieter wrote:
> > Ed Hill wrote:
> > 
> >> If you use %{_libdir} then you will have to deal with multi-lib 
> > 
> > What makes you say that?
> > 
> As Ralf said, when you place binaries into %{_libdir} you have to deal
> with different paths on different systems.
> 
> On x86:
>   /usr/lib/gromacs-2/bin/wheel
> 
> On x86_64:
>   /usr/lib64/gromacs-2/bin/wheel
> 
> There's two possible ways to work around this:
> %{_libexecdir}
>   /usr/libexec/gromacs-2/bin/wheel
> 
> /usr/lib (*not* %{_libdir}):
>   /usr/lib/gromacs-2/bin/wheel

Or just fixup the path in env-module config file. That's about the only
technical argument in favour of libexec. Using libexec doesn't require
hacking the config files.

> I don't know that I favor one of these over the other... they both have
> precedent.  You could look at this as end-user applications or as
> environment-modules making these binaries "private" to the
> environment-modules "program".

GROMACS is an end-user app IIUC and its binaries are used directly.

> A third way to look at this would be to have an environment-modules
> directory and place things within that:
>   /usr/libexec/environment-modules/gromacs-2/bin/wheel
> 
> I'm not sure whether environment-modules only handles executables or if
> it also handles libraries, datafiles, etc, though.

It handles everything.

>  So I don't know
> whether that's the best place for an environment-modules directory to
> live.  Ed, do you have a comment on whether this is a good or bad idea
> for use of environment-modules?

I don't think it is. That's certainly a way of thinking about env-modules
I haven't considered, but I think treating GROMACS binaries as "private"
of environment modules makes no sense. They have nothing to do with
env-modules and they are not private. Rather, env-modules is a convenient
way of allowing both gromacs3 and gromacs to be installed concurrently
and avoiding polluting %{_bindir}.

Regards,
R.

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