Mike Pinkerton wrote: > If (1) we mount /usr ro over the network, and (2) we want /usr to be > reserved for managed software (for a variety of reasons), then /usr/ > local really doesn't fit anymore. > > Because /opt is the only other current directory that makes sense for > locally-compiled programs, I would symlink /usr/local -> /opt. Then symlink it to /opt/local or just /local. Or maybe /var/local. > I understand that the FHS recommends installing to /opt/appname, but > there is no enforcement of that. Currently compliance is a matter of > local policy. It's a convention also honored by the third-party crap which installs to /opt. (And yes, I consider binary blobs which bypass our package management to be crap. Even more so if they're proprietary.) >> I also don't think that the "app" model is something we should >> encourage, at >> all (package management exists for a reason!), but that is fairly >> irrelevant >> for this discussion because the model is already covered well by /opt. > > > You might not want to encourage the "app" model, but that boat > already left the dock. No, thankfully we do not have any crappy app stores yet in GNU/Linux and I want it to stay that way! > For Linux distros to be players on portables and desktops, they need to > recognize that there is an appetite among the user base for "app" type > programs that are easy to install (drag-and-drop). You can't get any easier than installing from Apper or gnome-packagekit. Pick your package, click Install, click Apply, confirm dependencies if any (just click OK, and at least Apper also offers you a "Don't ask again" option there), enter the root password (something you'd also have to do to install a crappy blob into /opt) and there you go! (And you can also configure PolicyKit so that it allows you to install packages through PackageKit without a password. In fact that was the default in Fedora 12 as shipped, but got disabled in an update because it was deemed too lax a default policy.) > By bundling most of their dependencies, Yuck! That's exactly why bypassing the package management system is a HORRIBLE idea! The system resolves the dependencies for you, use it! App stores are technically inferior to repositories with dependency resolution. We already have the latter, so why would we support the former in any way? > "app" type programs become one way to create a cross-distro "app" > marketplace. "Market" as in you have to PAY for your apps? No thanks! I like my repositories where everything is free of charge! And I also don't like proprietary software, so I don't personally use RPM Fusion Nonfree even though it is also free of charge. An app store which makes it easy to distribute binary blobs would also promote proprietary software. No thanks! The current repository system also strongly encourages shipping your software under a Free Software (as in Free Speech) license (which allows packagers to compile it for distributions from source and those distributions to ship the packages in their repositories with no nasty strings attached). > If we end up with separate "app" marketplaces for Fedora, SUSE, > Debian, Ubuntu, et alios, they are all going to languish. That assumes we want such marketplaces in the first place. I definitely don't want cross-distro blobs built for the lowest common denominator with every single library bundled. (Not even if they're binaries of Free Software! That method of distribution is just technically awful, provides poor to no system integration (menu entries etc.) and needlessly wastes my bandwidth and disk space.) > On the other hand, a single "app" marketplace for mainstream Linux distros > might well prosper. So that's another reason not to support this. :-p We need to send a clear message that if you want to get your software out to Fedora users, it must get into the Fedora repository! That way: * the software must be appropriately licensed (Free as in Free Speech), guaranteeing the freedom to use, study, modify and redistribute (with or without charging for it) the software at will, * the packaging must be up to Fedora standards, following Fedora policies, not some cross-distro lowest common denominator (which invariably causes problems, e.g. proprietary software RPMs often disable RPM's automatic dependency extraction for some reason, so you can install them without the required libraries and they obviously won't actually work that way!), and * users get the software free of charge. It's not upstream's job to ship binaries, it's the packagers'! Upstream's job is to ship source code for distributions to package in their repositories. We should not make it easier for upstreams to ship binary blobs. > I would keep "app" type programs separate from locally-compiled > programs. With different update and back-up strategies for the two > types of programs, the separation makes housekeeping a lot easier. > If you prefer /opt/app and /opt/local, and symlink /usr/local -> /opt/ > local, that would work for me. As I wrote above, /opt/local makes more sense than plain /opt. > I understand. I think the concept of "cascading configuration files" > is useful enough, though, that it would be a worthwhile goal. > Perhaps when he finishes with systemd, Lennart can figure out how to > interpose a generalized configuration cascader that would ease the > pain. And, yes, I appreciate all the good work Lennart has been doing. Unifying the configuration systems of all applications and daemons has been attempted several times, e.g. by the Elektra project: http://www.libelektra.org/ , so far with very limited success. (Few to no upstream projects picked up their patches.) So we're stuck with the current ad-hoc solutions, which do not support such a cascading hierarchy. Kevin Kofler -- devel mailing list devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
