Re: Installation-issues

[Nicholas Lee <N.J.Lee@statslab.cam.ac.uk>]

On Wed, 9 Dec 1998, Jan Ekholm wrote:

> I was wondering what is the policy regarding installation of software
> nowadays. More specificly, where should software packages install
> themselves? I'm doing the final touches on a package right now and need
> some input. I have a lot of includes thet the user needs to access, two
> shared libraries as well as static versions of these, some binaries, a lot
> of samples, documentation (html), man-pages and so on. I have two options
> that I've found to be ok :

An important issue in the install process is how to handle patching, which
is generally quite popular in commerical games.  Any installation policy
should take this into account.


> 1. Drop it all on / and let it flow down to /usr/lib, /usr/bin,
> /etc, /usr/include, /usr/doc and so on. Easiest way for the application
> programmer who uses my system, but bad as it fills up /usr.
>
> 2. Create an directory in /opt and put it all there. Very easy for me, but
> harder for the application programmer, as he/she must manually tell the
> compiler where the libs & includes that will be used reside.

Personally I like the idea of install things in
/usr/local/pkg/zombie[/lib,/bin,/man,/etc] say, then _symlinking_
everything in [/lib,/bin,/man,/etc] into either the appropriate /usr or
/usr/local directories.

This generally makes maintainance and upgrading of packages very straight
forward.

nicholas


--
      "I reserve the right to contradict myself"
Nicholas Lee (Li Peng Ming)  n.j.lee at statslab.cam.ac in uk
Somewhere Out There