/usr/share vs /usr/libexec

[Paul Wouters]

On Wed, 22 Apr 2015, Miloslav Trmač wrote:

>>>> now I'm curious.
>>>>
>>>> Does it make more sense for these sort of scripts to live in
>>>> /usr/libexec, or in /usr/share?
>>>
>>> /usr/libexec.  From (info standards):
>>>
>>>> `libexecdir'
>>>>     The directory for installing executable programs to be run by other
>>>>     programs rather than by users.
>>>
>>
>> The thing that threw me is that I poked around in /usr/share and found this:
>>
>> $ cat /bin/createrepo
>> #!/bin/sh
>> exec /usr/share/createrepo/genpkgmetadata.py "$@"
>>
>> Given what you're saying, would this be considered a bug in createrepo?
>
> Then we get into philosophical discussions about what is “the program” and what is “data used by the program”…  In this case, the /usr/share/createrepo/* paths are not a documented stable API (but /usr/bin/createrepo is), and Python programs consisting of multiple files are easier to run and develop if all the files are in the same directory, so this seems a reasonable way to do things.

Seems like a good match to put into libexec to me,

Paul