[kde-solaris] [kde-discuss] KBE 1.0 - Build enviroment for KDE

[Shawn Walker]

On Dec 7, 2007 2:21 PM, Alan DuBoff <alan.duboff at sun.com> wrote:
> On Fri, 7 Dec 2007, Shawn Walker wrote:
>
> > No, that argument for moving to /usr does not hold here. I'm fairly
> > certain from the ARC cases (which I have been following with interest)
> > that their reasoning does not apply here as they are things that Sun is
> > distributing and is a completely different reasoning.
> >
> > The filesystem standard for /opt applies to 3rd party (optional)
> > software that you add that does not come from the vendor.
>
> Not in my mind. I don't see kde as being optional software, it's my
> desktop. I would like it with the rest of my system, in /usr, just like
> GNOME is on OpenSolaris. The only difference is that the community is
> working on this.

Yes, but then logically you would want to apply that to every other
piece of third party software and then you have the problem of that
third party software conflicting with what the vendor distributes.

So, by that logic, all of our dependencies and everything should go
into /usr, but that is bad for several reasons:

1) Our deps might be autodiscovered by a user who is also a developer
making it difficult to tell what is only there because we provided it
and not because it is a "standard" part of the system

2) Our deps are built against a different libstdc++ that will cause
problems from other applications that might depend on our deps

3) Our deps might conflict with already installed versions

4) Our deps are likely to not be compatible if other applications have
the same things

I understand your argument, but because of the C++ lib mess and all of
the special build options we are doing here, I don't think it's
viable.

Sun has also established the standard on Solaris 10 systems that
well-behaved software lives under /opt and system administrators have
come to depend on that.

Doing otherwise is likely to only infuriate admins; just ask on
opensolaris-discuss.

Now, as far as Indiana / whatever -- I would concede that installing
KDE under /usr, but all the dependences under /opt would be a good
compromise.

That would ensure that our dependencies wouldn't conflict with anyone
else's and still allow the expectations of *some* individuals to have
KDE in /usr.

Arguably, we could also have KDE live under /opt for these systems but
install a bunch of symlinks into /usr/bin if so desired.

I personally don't see what the advantage of installing KDE under /usr
is if you're going to not have any symlinks in /usr/bin anyway.

-- 
Shawn Walker, Software and Systems Analyst
http://binarycrusader.blogspot.com/

"To err is human -- and to blame it on a computer is even more so." -
Robert Orben