Public SourceMage Discussion List

["Ethan Grammatikidis" <eekee57 AT fastmail.fm>]

I started replying in -commit, but felt that some things won't ever be
suitable for the FHS, & thought that more appropriate for -discuss.
OpenSim is a new spell which upstream requires all it's components under
one directory; binaries, libraries (lots of them), config files, and
optionally databases.

On Tue, 11 Nov 2008 22:18:04 +0100 (CET), "Andraž 'ruskie' Levstik"
<ruskie AT codemages.net> said:
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> On Tue, 11 Nov 2008, flux wrote:
> 
> >> Try /opt/opensim next time it's more proper for such things.
> >
> > Unless upstream installs to /var (such as qmail, for example).
> 
> Only if it doesn't conflict with FHS if it does we are supposed to fix
> it.

To fix OpenSim for the FHS, I suspect the choices would be to break it
for .net (and thus half of it's development community) or to patch mono
to do things differently. The latter could increase the volume of
queries in #opensim and #osgrid by 50% for no gain in productivity and
require more from the already inadequately-maintained documentation in
the OpenSim wiki. Further it could well break everything else that uses
mono.

Interpreted strictly, the FHS provides no possible location for a .net
package such as opensim. The variable data of a package installed to
/opt should go to /var/opt, and the machine-specific configuration to
/etc/opt. By installing to /var, the package's variable data won't
break, at least. I suppose the argument could be made that no-one mounts
/opt readonly anyway these days, but I have a feeling that such
arguments are wrong more often than anyone realises.

What then to do with packages like OpenSim? The spell was created as a
convenient way to automate the build process, but being installed
someone's going to try to run it from the install location. Does that
matter? If I use the spell, I'd only use it to provide a file tree I can
clone. (I need to do that anyway to run multiple instances with
inependant configs.) However if I'm going to clone off the tree, I'd
rather look for it under /opt than /var, /opt is a much less mysterious
place. :} And so we come full circle *laughs*.
-- 
This post brought to you by:
Ethan Grammatikidis,
who follows directions like a butterfly.