Re: exploring a crazy (?) idea: /opt/fedora/apps for some applications?

[Matthew Miller]

On Wed, Oct 19, 2016 at 05:08:15PM +0200, Alexander Larsson wrote:
>  > > I actually had had a copr setup with a custom
> redhat-rpm-config
>  > > that automatically built things in a different prefix. Most
>  > > things built just fine with zero specfile changes.
>  > Well, that's encouraging, at least. It still means some degree of
>  > doing everything twice, but at least it's mostly computers doing
>  > it. :)
>  Just don't look at the macros, or you'll go blind! :) 
Ha. I've looked at the regular redhat-rpm-config macros so I'm
partially-innoculated. But generally, doing... creative... things there
is better than putting more complication in each spec file.

-- 
Matthew Miller
<mattdm(a)fedoraproject.org&gt;
Fedora Project Leader

exploring a crazy (?) idea: /opt/fedora/apps for some applications?

[Jason L Tibbitts III]

> >>>> "MM" == Matthew Miller
> <mattdm(a)fedoraproject.org&gt; writes: 
MM> Ha. I've looked at the regular redhat-rpm-config macros so I'm
MM> partially-innoculated. But generally, doing... creative... things
MM> there is better than putting more complication in each spec file.

I've been spending a lot of time in there and in RPM macro stuff in
general, doing things far worse than this.  So if there are specific
needs, we can try to come up with something.  I note with trepidation
that Red Hat already did something a bit like this with SCLs, but I
wouldn't recommend using those macros as any kind of an example.

And, you know, maybe someone (who knows or cares a lot more than I do)
could look back at relocatable RPMs and what the issues were there.
That was all a big "do not use" by the time I got involved so I can't
really say anything about them.

 - J<

exploring a crazy (?) idea: /opt/fedora/apps for some applications?

[Orion Poplawski]

On 10/19/2016 11:38 AM, Jason L Tibbitts III wrote:
> >>>>> "MM" == Matthew Miller
> <mattdm(a)fedoraproject.org&gt; writes:
>
>  MM> Ha. I've looked at the regular redhat-rpm-config macros so I'm
>  MM> partially-innoculated. But generally, doing... creative... things
>  MM> there is better than putting more complication in each spec file.
>
>  I've been spending a lot of time in there and in RPM macro stuff in
>  general, doing things far worse than this.  So if there are specific
>  needs, we can try to come up with something.  I note with trepidation
>  that Red Hat already did something a bit like this with SCLs, but I
>  wouldn't recommend using those macros as any kind of an example.
>
>  And, you know, maybe someone (who knows or cares a lot more than I do)
>  could look back at relocatable RPMs and what the issues were there.
>  That was all a big "do not use" by the time I got involved so I can't
>  really say anything about them. 
This isn't really directly applicable, but I've been playing around with 
building RPMs into /opt and creating a system of stackable dependencies 
among them.  Some more info is here:

https://github.com/altccrpms/info/wiki
https://github.com/altccrpms/altcc-rpm-macros

One challenge is that once you move out of /usr, you can no longer rely 
on the filesystem package to own the top level directories so I've had 
to add things like:

%files
%{?altcc:%altcc_files %{_bindir} %{_libdir} %{_mandir}/man1}

to own the appropriate directories.

But I have been pretty happy with being able to build parallel 
installable rpms of different versions of packages while maintaining 
some automatic dependencies as well.  Packages provide/require are 
prefixed with their install location so they have a separate namespace.

It also has been fairly straightforward to redefine _prefix and 
_sysconfdir and that works for most packages.

- Orion

-- 
Orion Poplawski
Technical Manager                     303-415-9701 x222
NWRA/CoRA Division                    FAX: [phone]
3380 Mitchell Lane                  orion(a)cora.nwra.com
Boulder, CO 80301              http://www.cora.nwra.com

exploring a crazy (?) idea: /opt/fedora/apps for some applications?

[Matthew Miller]

On Wed, Oct 19, 2016 at 09:01:29PM -0600, Orion Poplawski wrote:
>  One challenge is that once you move out of /usr, you can no longer
>  rely on the filesystem package to own the top level directories so 

Hmmm, yeah, also not necessarily relevant to $subject, but should we
have either filesystem or filesystem-opt own /opt/fedora and
maybe /opt/fedora/lib and /opt/fedora/bin (as per FHS)?

-- 
Matthew Miller
<mattdm(a)fedoraproject.org&gt;
Fedora Project Leader

exploring a crazy (?) idea: /opt/fedora/apps for some applications?

[Pavel Raiskup]

On Wednesday, October 19, 2016 12:38:06 PM CEST Jason L Tibbitts III wrote:
>  >>>>> "MM" == Matthew Miller
> <mattdm(a)fedoraproject.org&gt; writes:
>  
>  MM> Ha. I've looked at the regular redhat-rpm-config macros so I'm
>  MM> partially-innoculated. But generally, doing... creative... things
>  MM> there is better than putting more complication in each spec file.
>  
>  I've been spending a lot of time in there and in RPM macro stuff in
>  general, doing things far worse than this.  So if there are specific
>  needs, we can try to come up with something.  I note with trepidation
>  that Red Hat already did something a bit like this with SCLs, but I
>  wouldn't recommend using those macros as any kind of an example. 
Sorry, ad "SCLs is not any kind of an example" ... it is easy to say this.

There's no need for trepidation here, there are good reasons to have
(something like) SCLs.  The long term ugly fact is that we in community
say that "SCL guys must _stop_ and wait (forever...) till somebody else
satisfies this demand", we should rather try to iterate towards correct
and acceptable solution for everybody.

To the point, if there's something wrong with the design, one should point
out how that /opt solution will be fixed, how to comply with FHS rules, etc..
because there are non-trivial problems.

>  And, you know, maybe someone (who knows or cares a lot more than I
> do)
>  could look back at relocatable RPMs and what the issues were there.
>  That was all a big "do not use" by the time I got involved so I can't
>  really say anything about them. 
Good point here with relocable RPMs, I'm not here that long to remember the
worries ... but I can imagine there were similar issues as with SCLs.

A bit unrelated:  We fight against "rpath" all the time in Fedora (for good
reasons!), but once you start doing something like non-default --prefix/--libdir
installation, (something like) rpath makes sense.

Pavel