9base in Fedora?

[Alexander Boström]

fre 2011-05-20 klockan 14:17 +0200 skrev Petr Sabata:

>     #1, aka the Gentoo way 
>     Gentoo installs its 9base package into /usr/plan9, basically not touching
>     9base files at all. This collides with FHS and therefore would require an
>     exception in Packaging Guidelines.

About /usr, FHS has this to say:

        Large software packages must not use a direct subdirectory under
        the /usr hierarchy.

http://www.pathname.com/fhs/pub/fhs-2.3.html#THEUSRHIERARCHY

> #2, aka the Debian way 
>     Debian installs its 9base package into /usr/lib. Well, most of it. They
>     also prefix all the manpages with 'plan9-', not the binaries, though.
>     This placement (provided we use %{_libdir}) introduces issues for Plan
>     9 rc shell scripts and their shebangs.

/usr/lib/9base/bin, specifically.

About /usr/lib in FHS:

        Applications may use a single subdirectory under /usr/lib.

Well that sounds just like what we need.

But there's also this bit:

        /usr/lib includes object files, libraries, and internal binaries
        that are not intended to be executed directly by users or shell
        scripts.

Which doesn't work in this case.

http://www.pathname.com/fhs/pub/fhs-2.3.html#USRLIBLIBRARIESFORPROGRAMMINGANDPA

> #3, aka the Fedora way?
>     Should we do this in some other way?

Fedora + FHS doesn't seem to allow for any decent way of installing
multiple user-oriented binaries with the same name. I suggest adding a
prefix "9" or "9base-" or similar to all the binaries and man pages. You
may even make "/usr/bin/9base-foo" a symlink into
"/usr/lib/9base/bin/foo" so the user can still add the other directory
to their PATH and have the short names.

If the prefix solution is not acceptable then #2 is the best alternative
because it's a smaller FHS violation and doesn't clutter /usr.

/abo