Re: [bincimap] rpm paths....

[Peter Teichman]

I believe this is the correct solution, having worked in the packaging of Ximian GNOME for a few years. Files in /usr/local should not be package-managed. I don't think there should be any distinction between the distribution vendor and third-party packages like bincimap, and the vendor definitely can't put anything into /usr/local.

I would consider it acceptable to install to either a tree in /opt, like you are doing now, or install the whole thing into /usr and /etc like most packages shipped by a Linux distribution.

I would probably go with the latter option, but I'm happy with the current solution. /opt doesn't leave any bad taste in my mouth. :)

Peter

On Sunday, February 9, 2003, at 07:06 AM, Andreas Aardal Hanssen wrote:

On Sun, 9 Feb 2003, Caskey Dickson wrote:

On Sun, Feb 09, 2003 at 10:54:02AM +0100, Andreas Aardal Hanssen wrote:

The /usr/local hierarchy is for use by the system administrator when
installing software locally. Binc IMAP will go there if you do not specify
any prefix when building from source.

If it is the case that the RPMs are installing into /opt, I'd like to
recommend that they install themselve into /usr/local. It still perfectly
(and arguably more exactly) conforms to the FHS. Besides, /opt is a bit of a
throwback. Plus there's the warning about not being insulated vs. the host
OS and legacy packages.

The FHS archives suggest that its contributers are looking for a better
seperation of the two. According to one thread (you can search this up I
guess), Solaris defines /opt as follows:

"/opt is the *only* directory to which software that is not part of base
Solaris may be delivered."

/usr/local, however, is the default location that autoconf chooses if the
administrator does not supply a prefix. That might be the reason why
tarball installed software ends up in /usr/local. IMHO, packaged software
under /usr/local seems a bit off.

I'm going to stick with /opt by default for now, and I'll see what I can
do to make the package relocatable. This will mess up the paths in the
service and conf files, but I guess that the administrators that insist on
installing Binc IMAP under /usr/local also know how to edit conf files
:-D.

As for the FHS, it very nearly worked out of the box with 1.0.20. I had to
manualy link up a few things in /usr/local and of course manually create the
daemontools run scripts.

The rpm bundled deamontools and xinetd scripts are also in the tarball,
under service/ and conf/. But it doesn't say anywhere. :-/

Andy

--
Andreas Aardal Hanssen | http://www.andreas.hanssen.name/gpg
Author of Binc IMAP    | Nil desperandum