* On 2012 07 Apr 01:29 -0500, Christopher Howard wrote: > Thanks. Actually, early today I decided the most sensible thing to do > would be to just /not/ have the desktop/icon files installed by the > source, but rather to just package them with the source and leave the > installation to the distros. That will work if you're not concerned about your package working without some extra work by the local administrator when the package is built locally. My apologies if this is getting a bit off topic for this list. The File Hierarchy Standard specifies that /usr/local is a mirror directory structure of /usr and that distribution package managers are not to touch that area. I've interpreted that to mean that locally compiled packages should stay under /usr/local and not write elsewhere, except /etc on installation. So it seems as though your package should put its .desktop files under /usr/local/share/applications and icons under /usr/local/share/pixmaps based on the structure under /usr on a Debian system which aim to meet the FHS. > I found out upon further research that putting static files in a > static location is not a hard thing for package managers to do. Gentoo > has functions specifically for installing menu files and icons, and > for a Debian package its a simple do_install call. Furthermore, if I > tried to wrap it in make install, this would cause additional > problems, because then people would have to have root privileges in > order to install, since the proper /usr/share locations are usually > root owned. Also /usr/share could be read only. Presumably the system administrator will make arrangements for /usr/local to be writable before attempting install the package. Your generated Makefile will create the needed directories in the /usr/local hiearchy such as under /usr/local/share for your package. It has been my philosophy to assure the package I maintain works under /usr/local. This facilitates the local admin being able to install an updated version from source and with the rest of the system search paths set to favor packages installed under /usr/local, provides a clean way to update a package even when the package manager requires an older version be installed. You also want to assure that when your package is installed from source that by default it doesn't overwrite anything installed by a package manager. Autoconf helps with this by providing /usr/local as the default prefix. In short, my philosophy is to have the source package independent of distribution package managers and it seems to work. - Nate >> -- "The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds. The pessimist fears this is true." Ham radio, Linux, bikes, and more: http://www.n0nb.us _______________________________________________ Autoconf mailing list Autoconf@xxxxxxx https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/autoconf
