Re: Installation-issues

[Jan Ekholm <chakie@infa.abo.fi>]

On Wed, 9 Dec 1998, Nicholas Lee wrote:

>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.

Hmm. I really didn't think about that, as my stuff is basically something
that will be used by only the game-programmers, not end-users. Patches
therefore are made as total upgrades of the entire package... :-)

>> 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.

But then you have stuff in both a common /opt (or /usr/local) directory as
well as the usual /lib, /bin and so on. Basically much more things that
might go wrong. I like the system that among others our university's
Solaris servers have with a /opt/package, and then /opt/lib, /opt/bin that
symlink into /opt/package. Like what you had in mind, but more restricted,
all stuff will stay under _one_ branch, namely /opt.

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

I planned on having RPM do that for me. making RPM:s is quite simple, and
it solves the entire maintainability-issue. New versions can be
distributed every now and then, and people can install it without too much
hassle, one single commandline at best :

	rpm -Uvh ftp://ftp.somehost.com/path/to/package.rpm

Any ideas? What system do the other PP-projects use? Where is stuff
actually put?

------------------------+-------------------------------------------------
  Jan 'Chakie' Ekholm   |  CS at Åbo Akademi University, Turku, Finland 
 Linux Inside since '94 |      chakie@infa.abo.fi, jekholm@abo.fi