Hello, > Could some kind soul please provide some guidance (or perhaps just > opinions/perspective?) regarding the handling of *.mod files within a > Linux distribution? The "where should they live?" question came up on > the Fedora packaging list at: > > https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-packaging/2007-October/msg00006.html Well, I think the constraints detailed in that thread are correct, including the fact that they are architecture-dependent. Moreover, something that might not have been considered by you until now is that they also are compiler-dependent: different compilers will generate different .mod files for the same source, and different versions of the same compiler might generate different .mod files. For this reason, I think it's considered bad programming style for a project to require mod files from another project in order to compile. But, since there appears to be existing examples of this practice, we probably have to find a practical solution to this issue anyway. We had some discussion a while back about where to put module files (thread starting at http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/fortran/2005-11/msg00516.html), but a conclusion was easier to reach because we were only dealing with gfortran intrinsic (or "internal") module files, so we ended up hidding them inside the gcc directories (/usr/lib*/gcc/${target}/${version}/finclude). For the naming, there was a general agreement about "finclude" (with F for Fortran). A minority was leaning towards "mod" or "modules", which is more correct from the Fortran point of view (these files are module files, and are not "included" in the Fortran terminology), but then there is a risk of confusion with other meanings for modules (kernel modules, or whatever). Now, my personnal opinion is that since these files are compiler-generated and target-dependent, they are very similar to libraries. For that reason, I think they probably should be placed in /usr/lib*/finclude, or in /usr/finclude*, where * can be 32, 64 or nothing. Regards, FX -- Fedora-packaging mailing list Fedora-packaging@xxxxxxxxxx https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-packaging
