Subject: Re: new site for my ports is up
From: "Robert Collins" <[email-masked]>
To: "Charles Wilson" <[email-masked]>, "John Marshall" <[email-masked]>
Cc: <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 16 Nov 2001 17:01:14 +1100

----- Original Message -----
From: "Charles Wilson" <[email-masked]>

> John Marshall wrote:
>
> > On Wed, Nov 14, 2001 at 05:56:45PM -0500, Charles Wilson wrote:
> >
> Way back at the dawn of time (which 1.1 was first released and
"cygwin" was
> split into the many separate packages we now know and love) it was
decided
> that "official" packages would install into /usr.
>
> That's all.
>
> Common courtesy then requires that if you are creating an *unofficial*
> package, that you do NOT put it into /usr, lest it be confused with an
> official version.

I don't see how this is implied.

> > Over in RPM land, I have users telling me that they want the
> > /usr v /usr/local decision to be determined by whether something is
> > package managed (and thus uninstallable via rpm/setup), rather than
> > by whether it happens to come from the vendor.
>
>
> Well, we certainly can't stop you from doing whatever you want.
However, I
> believe the LSB/FSH actually *does* say something about
distribution-vendor
> supplied packages treated differently from "random" ones.  But I could
be
> wrong (it's happened before).

Sorry, you're wrong. (nyahh nyahh :}).  The LSB says zip about this
under packages and FHS, and the FHS says
"/usr/local - local hierarchy (empty after main installation)." I
contend that packages created by vendors to be compatible with setup.exe
(and therefore able to be used as part of the main installation) should
honour this as well.

Additionally, 4.9.1 of the FHS says that /usr/local is for use by the
sysadmin when installing software locally *and needs to be safe from
being overwritten when the system software is updated*.

IMO setup.exe should refuse to write to /usr/local (but we'd probably
then get folk complaining about that too :}.)

> > So I get flamed for producing a .rpm that installs to /usr/local,
and
> > am probably going to change to /usr because I think they're right.
>
> If you are creating your own distribution, then *YOU* are the vendor.
You
> can put whatever you like into /usr.  or /fred.  Just don't refer your
> users to us.

Surely that is orthogonal to where the packages install to?

> > Currently I produce a package for Cygwin setup.exe that installs to
> > /usr, and I'm about to start getting flamed for that too?  :-)
>
> No.  We can't stop you, and really have no interest in flaming you
about
> your personal cygwin-derived distribution.  Just so we don't get
spillover
> questions on the list.

John, Where are the tarballs again, so I can check them against the
setup.exe standards? You do want Curl included correct?

> Oh, and long term, installed.db may become an actual database instead
of a
> simple text file...

Long term? Oh, yes right :}.

Rob

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