Re: Call For Articles

[Pierre Phaneuf <pp@ludusdesign.com>]

Ingo Ruhnke wrote:

> > I think mostly *every* package has at least one option: where to
> > install. And there are generally two modes of installation: a normal way
> > (say, set the prefix to /usr or /opt) and a "local" way (put everything
> > in $HOME/package-name).
> 
> I compile most stuff from source (automake), the normal way would be
> do install under another prefix, since the binary tar.gz would contain
> the subdirs:
> 
> $prefix/games/THEGAME
> $prefix/share/games/THEGAME/
> $prefix/lib/games/THEGAME
> ...
> 
> Installing under a different directory would just mean to change the
> prefix, that wouldn't look very nice under opt/ or home/, since you
> would get some unused subdirs under the prefix dir but that would
> cause the lessest throuble.
> Flatten the directory sturcture would cause some more throuble and
> would make think more difficult for the programmer.

I meant more of a semi flattened directory structure. For example,
semi-flattening your example would give this:

$installdir/THEGAME
$installdir/share/
$installdir/lib/

Where $installdir would be something like /home/pp/quadra-1.0.2 or
/opt/quadra-1.0.2. No need to have
/opt/quadra-1.0.2/share/games/quadra-1.0.2/quadra.res when
/opt/quadra-1.0.2/share/quadra.res would do.

> > The idea is that some people don't have RPM. :-)
> 
> You could still maintain different files, a RPM, a tar.gz, a debian
> package, etc. But that is real work, a simple tar.gz which generates
> the other throu a install script could be interessting.

There's also a question of disk space on our web server. And work for me
too.

-- 
Pierre Phaneuf
Ludus Design, http://ludusdesign.com/
"First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you.
Then they fight you. Then you win." -- Gandhi