FreeCalypso > hg > freecalypso-tools
comparison PACKAGING @ 435:0a01e1c4ea54
documentation: added some notes about the importance of preserving
our /opt/freecalypso private directory hierarchy
| author | Mychaela Falconia <falcon@freecalypso.org> |
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| date | Sun, 04 Nov 2018 21:55:19 +0000 |
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| 434:3ec8ef8b2d37 | 435:0a01e1c4ea54 |
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| 1 It has been brought to the Mother's attention that some people don't like the | |
| 2 way our FC host tools are designed to be installed under /opt/freecalypso as | |
| 3 opposed to some standard location like /usr/local, and that some people have | |
| 4 been patching our Makefiles and code to move our installed binaries (and perhaps | |
| 5 some of the support files as well) to other locations which they like better. | |
| 6 | |
| 7 PLEASE DON'T DO IT, especially if you are making a package or a build or setup | |
| 8 or install script to be used by more than just you. FC host tools are a very | |
| 9 complex package with a lot of interrelations between different tools, many | |
| 10 tools in our suite internally invoke other tools by their /opt/freecalypso/bin | |
| 11 absolute pathnames, some tools are designed to be invoked both by human users | |
| 12 and by other tools (rvinterf is a prime example), and there are many support | |
| 13 files used by various tools. If you try to outsmart the Mother and change the | |
| 14 install location to something other than what I designed it to be, you will | |
| 15 inevitably break something, and you probably won't notice the breakage because | |
| 16 a typical casual user only uses a very small subset of our tools. Furthermore, | |
| 17 if you move the install location, you will certainly break our various | |
| 18 additional tools which are not included in the core FC host tools package but | |
| 19 are meant to be installed on top of it, as all of them expect and require the | |
| 20 /opt/freecalypso directory hierarchy described in doc/opt-freecalypso-tree. | |
| 21 | |
| 22 If your goal is to have our installed binaries accessible with a standard PATH | |
| 23 without adding /opt/freecalypso/bin to it, the correct solution is to list the | |
| 24 binaries installed in /opt/freecalypso/bin and make a symlink to each of these | |
| 25 binaries from /usr/bin or from /usr/local/bin or from wherever you like. Use | |
| 26 symlinks, don't move the binaries themselves! If you move the actual binaries, | |
| 27 you will break those tools which internally invoke other tools, which we do a | |
| 28 lot. | |
| 29 | |
| 30 If you still dislike the whole idea, consider the way Firefox does it: official | |
| 31 release binaries from Mozilla are meant to be installed under /usr/lib/firefox | |
| 32 or /usr/lib/firefox-$VERSION, the stuff inside that directory looks nothing like | |
| 33 FHS, it is private to Firefox just like our /opt/freecalypso directory hierarchy | |
| 34 is private to FreeCalypso, and the user makes one symlink from /usr/bin/firefox | |
| 35 to /usr/lib/firefox-$VERSION/firefox or wherever the full complex package | |
| 36 resides. If you can live with Firefox and other major application packages | |
| 37 having their own non-FHS private directory trees, you can surely live with | |
| 38 FreeCalypso doing the same. | |
| 39 | |
| 40 Why did we make our prefix /opt/freecalypso and not /usr/lib/freecalypso or | |
| 41 /usr/local/freecalypso? Because there are many, many places where the full | |
| 42 absolute pathname needs to be typed, and the location we chose is the shortest | |
| 43 among other sensible options. | |
| 44 | |
| 45 Anyone who is going to make binary packages of our FC host tools (presumably | |
| 46 for use on systems on which compilation from source is difficult) and wishes to | |
| 47 have their packaging officially endorsed by the upstream MUST follow these | |
| 48 guidelines: | |
| 49 | |
| 50 * The complete set of tools and support files MUST be included as if one built | |
| 51 and installed our package from the official source, without omitting or | |
| 52 breaking any part which you might consider unimportant. | |
| 53 | |
| 54 * Everything MUST be installed under /opt/freecalypso exactly as designed by | |
| 55 the Mother; symlinks to binaries under /opt/freecalypso/bin from a more user- | |
| 56 friendly location may optionally be included. |