On Sat, Sep 4, 2010 at 3:28 PM, Andrew Flegg <[email protected]> wrote: >>> >>> "Application shall be installed to /opt/packagename/ and >>> /var/opt/packagename/ directories. System wide >>> configuration files shall be stored in >>> /etc/opt/packagename directory. User specific files >>> shall be stored in ~/.config/packagename directory." >> >> This seems targeted at app-store-like applications. >> Right? And I think it's a good idea. > > Indeed. Although I haven't read the draft spec itself, I guess this is to > assist vendors who are forced for reasons technical (or of lack of foresight) > into repeating the NAND/eMMC split that Nokia had with the N900, but that > left not enough space on the rootfs to install many apps. The /opt hack was > born. >
Actually, from my experience in packaging for a linux distro... it avoids file collisions. Suppose you have two packages 'foo' and 'bar.' Both of these packages will try to install the file /usr/share/pixmaps/pong.png. Suppose the user installs 'bar' first. The user will then be unable to install 'foo' because it will overwrite that file. If you are the upstream OS (MeeGo, Fedora, RHEL, Debian, etc.) then you work through this issue with policies and negotiations on mailing lists, etc -- because you're making it a part of your OS. In this case, we're talking about making it "add-on." By installing to /opt... then foo puts everything in /opt/foo and bar puts everything in /opt/bar. No (or at least, fewer) collisions. -gabriel _______________________________________________ MeeGo-dev mailing list [email protected] http://lists.meego.com/listinfo/meego-dev
