Re: [Scrollkeeper-devel] Handling relocatable packages

[Dan M. <d-...@uc...>]

On Fri, 17 Nov 2000, Nik Clayton wrote:

> On Fri, Nov 17, 2000 at 10:46:20AM -0600, Dan Mueth wrote:
> > Before I get into my idea, I wanted to ask people who actually supports
> > and uses relocatable packages?  Apparently all of Red Hat Linux and GNOME
> > are non-relocatable.  Nick has indicated that *BSD at least sometimes uses
> > relocatable packages.  I'm curious which operating system / packaging
> > system / distributions actually support and use relocatable packages.
> 
> You *absolutely* have to support relocatable packages.  

My questions wasn't *whether* to support relocatable packages.  (As you
can see I proposed a method on how we can support them.)  Instead I was
asking who makes packages which are relocatable.  Presumably whoever
replies with "We use relocatable packages." will have a vested interest in
helping us find the best way to support them.

> The BSD ports/packages systems support it, as does RPM.  I'd be incredibly
> surprised if Debian's format didn't.
> 
> For example, suppose I want to install a Debian administrator's guide
> on to my FreeBSD system (perhaps I want to learn more about Debian).
> 
> If I read the Debian docs properly, it's going to want to install somewhere
> under /usr/doc. 
> 
> Sorry, on a FreeBSD system that's a no go area -- /usr/doc is reserved for
> documentation that comes with the OS (in fact, it's not even /usr/doc anymore
> it's /usr/share/doc/, because /usr/share/ is where architecturally neutral
> files live).
> 
> Since this is a local addition to the system, it would (on FreeBSD) live 
> in /usr/local/share/doc/<mumble>.  Of course, I might not be root on this
> box, in which case I'm probably going to want to install it somewhere
> under $HOME/share/doc/, or similar (or maybe even $HOME/public_html, so
> I can browse it easily from elsewhere).
> 
> > My suggestion:
> > 
> > For non-relocatable packages, everything stays exactly as it is now and
> > was described in proposal #3.
> 
> There should be no such thing as a non-relocatable package.

Perhaps. However that is more idealogical.  In reality many (possibly    
most?) packages are non-relocatable.  For example all of Red Hat Linux is
non-relocatable.  (I have no idea about the other Linux distributions or   
Solaris.)  Those people who already have non-relocatable packages will
leave out the step which makes their docs relocatable.

> For FreeBSD, this means that some of the guys that produce the ports do
> actually go through the code, substituting "/usr/bin" with "$PREFIX/bin"
> (or whatever) so that the application can be installed outside of it's
> expected directory hierarchy.

So what do you think of my suggestion for how we allow people to make   
relocatable packages which use scrollkeeper?  Does it seem like a decent
solution?  Do you have any ideas on a better solution or how we can
improve this one?  

It seems to me that it makes things substantially easier than the original
suggestion which required the install script to keep track of the location
of every OMF file and every document.  

At the same time it keeps things as simple as possible for those people
who do not make relocatable packages.

Dan