First of all, whats the acronym FHS standing for?
You asked for a better explanation, i hope i can deliver it.
Script-Tools has several purposes and ideas behind its creation. 1) At first it was designed to be distributed as tarball, i want to keep this option, as this allows an easy port/install to any other linux distro. (just extract anywhere of your choice and run from there) 2) Easy - Reusability 3) Easy - Set and forget
As i was told, Fedora doesnt allow to install packages at custom locations, allthough it describes how-to in the docs... weird imho... If i take this as a fact, and refer to your saying, /usr/share/%name is ment for read-only files, it would be a good match after all, as i currently save any data in $HOME/bin/$USER-libs, and offering $HOME/bin/$USER-scripts to be used for custom scripts using the functions which Script-Tools provides. But... as i will going to get the use of /usr/bin for the start-script, i wonder if $HOME/bin/$USER-libs|*-scripts is acceptable, specialy since none of them are required. However, i'll have to rewrite the dev section, so it stores the project|rpm|sourceforge info somewhere in $HOME/.config or so?
That sounds a bit like a design mistake. Can you tell why you think you would need a directory structure below /usr/bin and not elsewhere?
After a rethought, the only thing that could be placed in /usr/bin would be the starting script, and those files in $stDir/scripts. And that file can refer to /usr/share/%name to find all sub-folders /files. The other 'single' scripts, which until now reside in $stDir/scripts do not use the functions the Script-Tools provide, so that wouldnt be a problem.
Placing the main script (or a symlink) to /usr/bin would also no longer need /etc/profile.d/%name.sh. Got to say, i start liking this idea, until now i didnt feel comfortable doing so, as i thought "its just my script, nothing high-end-professional/required".
Gosh this is more of a chat than an explanation, i'm sorry.
2012/7/12 packaging-request@lists.fedoraproject.org
Message: 6 Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2012 13:00:15 +0200 From: Michael Schwendt mschwendt@gmail.com To: packaging@lists.fedoraproject.org Subject: Re: [Fedora-packaging] Script-Tools, which location? Message-ID: 20120712130015.5b0810e8@gmail.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
On Thu, 12 Jul 2012 00:53:03 +0200, Simon A. Erat wrote:
Heyas
As i'm new to packaging, specificly to linux, i am a little confused at this moment.
I have my scripts (kind of framework, but for any enduser they are just tools) which i'd like to be shiped with Fedora, however, until now i was thinking like: My Package = Additional Software = /usr/share/%name.
It cannot be generalized like that. When deciding where to store files, one must tell what type of files they are. Skimming over the FHS can help to find the proper location, as the packaging for Fedora can get a lot more trouble-some, if a software project installs into uncommon locations or violates the FHS even. /usr/share/ is for architecture-independent read-only data files.
Now that i had opened a Review Request ( https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=835089), someone asked my
whe i
didnt pack my scripts into /usr/bin.
/usr/bin sounds reasonable.
At least, it should be easily possible for your project to store small scripts in /usr/bin, which know about their home directory, from where to load supporting files (including additional hidden scripts not to make available in $PATH).
Allthought i like this idea, i do not feel that this would be 'clean', as my script tools base upon a directory structure, while there are no directories in /usr/bin.
That sounds a bit like a design mistake. Can you tell why you think you would need a directory structure below /usr/bin and not elsewhere?
From the same person i was told that /etc/profile.d/%name.sh would not
be a
good solution as it wont work with csh, zsh, with which i agree, but couldnt think of a better solution until now.
That's inaccurate. Adjusting $PATH via profile.d scripts is a good solution for *some* projects, e.g "ccache", but it ought to be an exception (and there's a reason why "ccache" does it like that). It doesn't sound correct/ideal/elegant for your scripts.
Now the idea came up to place the 'base-script' (st) in /usr/bin, while everything else would be in a folder somewhere. However, this has a hughe drawback, as it (the script tools) wont work in this mixed up (split
away)
environment.
As above, a design mistake?
Until now, one could have been sure, that in any case if i move the directory the scripts tools are in, anywhere else, one could just execute the main script and everything kept working.
The scripts would stay in /usr/bin, be available for execution by every user, and if you moved anything at all with an update of the software in an update of the RPM package, you would replace the script files. Why would the new files not work anymore (or not know about changed directories)?
This was achieved by symlinking the actualy path to /usr/share/%name, of course only if it wasnt installed there using rpm/yum (default).
Perhaps you could explain in more detail what problem you're trying to solve?
Further, it takes some use of 'configuration' files, uses some sort of templates and lots of other stuff.
That's not unusual.
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Simon A. Erat wrote:
First of all, whats the acronym FHS standing for?
The Filesystem Hierarchy Standard: http://www.pathname.com/fhs/pub/fhs-2.3.html
It's linked from the Packaging Guidelines, which I hope you read before you made your package: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging:Guidelines#Filesystem_Layout
- At first it was designed to be distributed as tarball, i want to keep
this option, as this allows an easy port/install to any other linux distro. (just extract anywhere of your choice and run from there)
It's easier to do that if you give your relocatable directory tree an FHS-like structure, with a prefix that can be set to "/usr", "/usr/local", "/opt/Simon's-script-tools" or anything else, and place scripts in $prefix/bin, read-only data in $prefix/share et cetera.
You may still find that you need to make your scripts capable of adapting a bit to different directory layouts.
i currently save any data in $HOME/bin/$USER-libs, and offering $HOME/bin/$USER-scripts to be used for custom scripts using the functions which Script-Tools provides.
You shouldn't make subdirectories under $HOME/bin any more than under /usr/bin. Although users' home directories are less standardized than system directories, $HOME/bin is typically used for the users' own programs that they want to be able to run from a command prompt. Programs in subdirectories wouldn't be found unless the users added the subdirectories to PATH.
Also, anything that ends with "libs" seems like a bad name for a directory to save data in.
Björn Persson
packaging@lists.fedoraproject.org
-
Björn Persson -
Simon A. Erat