[Fedora-packaging] Packaging Go libraries for Fedora

[Richard W.M. Jones]

(The same topic came up on this list about a month ago, with no
particular resolution).

Fedora 18+ now has a proper Go compiler, and if you get the
version in updates-testing, it's even a working Go compiler :-)

Go seems to have a "unique" approach to packaging libraries.  It looks
as if everything revolves around there being a Go compiler + lots of
bundled libraries that come with that Go compiler.  On Fedora this
gets installed into %_libdir/golang.

But for libraries that aren't bundled with the Go compiler, it looks
like the Go designers intended you to keep them in your home directory:

http://golang.org/doc/code.html#Organization

This is of course not so great from a packaging/security/updates
point of view.

Now as far as I can tell, we can just ignore the $GOPATH stuff, and
instead drop files into the right places in %_libdir/golang.  It works
in my single, limited experiment, but I've no idea if this is the
Right Thing to do.

I think we should leave the $GOPATH environment variable alone.  If
users want to install things in their home directory too, they can set
up $GOPATH and the directory structure themselves.

Thoughts on this? (especially from anyone who knows what they're
talking about, which is not necessarily me ...)

I have a small cgo library which I'd like to package for Fedora, so
this discussion is not entirely theoretical.

Rich.

-- 
Richard Jones, Virtualization Group, Red Hat http://people.redhat.com/~rjones
Read my programming blog: http://rwmj.wordpress.com
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