Marcus Brinkmann wrote:
> On Sat, Apr 10, 1999 at 01:42:34PM -0700, Joey Hess wrote:
> > Martin Mitchell wrote:
> > > Indeed, and if you note the last point, the X Window System is excepted
> > > due
> > > to "considerable precedent and widely-accepted practice." I'd say the same
> > > is true of cross compiling environments.
> >
> > I'd say it isn't, because the fsstnd doesn't exempt it.
>
> But then, a cross compiler setup is not really a "software package", so I
> think the paragraph in question doesn't apply to cross compilers.
Quit arguing semantics. Of course a compiler is a software package. The
fsstnd never defines the word "package" because it is not a legal document.
To understand what they might mean by "package" you'd have to either ask them
or try to figure out what "package" meant in 1995. Since debian was in
existance at that time, and Daniel Quinlan, the major author of the fsstnd,
was a debian developer, I think it's safe to assume he used it in the same
sense we use it today. As a collection of files that work together to
provide some functionality to the system.
"package" is a term used all over the fsstnd, in a manner that is consistent
with today's meaning of the term. If you try to redefine "package", you
invalidate all these uses of it.
"It also eases system administration, development of second and third
party packages, and the writing of implementation independent
documentation."
"The filesystem standard has been designed to be used by Linux
distribution developers, package developers, and system implementors."
"o Any incompatibilities between primary Linux distributions and other
software packages were typically solved by methods of a less than
appealing nature."
"o util-linux package
Rik Faith <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>"
"An 'implementation' here refers to a distribution, an installed system,
a program, a package (or some similar piece of software or data), or
some component thereof."
"The Linux filesystem structure provides more
than enough flexibility for any package. Any package that does occupy a
directory under the root of the filesystem suffers from sheer arrogance."
"we recommend using the name vmlinux or vmlinuz which have
been used in recent Linux kernel source packages."
"No large package (such as TeX and GNU Emacs) should use a direct
subdirectory of /usr."
"Any program or package which contains or requires data that doesn't need
to be modified should store that data in /usr/lib"
"The troff and other text processing macro packages are
found here."
"Networking presented an interesting dilemma. Some people wanted to
separate networking binaries and configuration from other binaries and
configuration. However, we disagree. We feel that networking is not a
"package", but an integral part of most UNIX (and UNIX-like) machines."
"There are more
examples of "good" uses of symbolic links, but the entire issue boils
down to two things: packages should be able to find things where they
expect them (within reason) and symbolic links can be used to solve the
problem in many cases."
--
see shy jo
