Re: [Chicken-users] Installing data files for eggs

[Felix]

From: John Cowan <address@hidden>
Subject: Re: [Chicken-users] Installing data files for eggs
Date: Fri, 22 Oct 2010 09:22:30 -0400

> On Fri, Oct 22, 2010 at 6:24 AM, Felix
> <address@hidden> wrote:
> 
>> Well, the question is whether it is allowed on systems that use a
>> strict policy on what directories can be written to on installation
>> (my terminology may be wrong). So on debian systems the egg repository
>> ends up somewhere in /var. What I'd like to know whether the same
>> policy applies to $PREFIX/share, or more precisely: should the data be
>> installed there or in /var ? Installing in the normal repository path
>> ($PREFIX/lib/chicken/$BINVERSION or $PREFIX/var/<whatever>) is
>> no big deal, and any extension can already install subdirectories
>> by simple putting the directory name in the files-list in
>> `install-extension'.
> 
> The constraint on share directories (or at least on /usr/share and
> /usr/local/share) is that files placed there must be read-only (in
> normal operation, obviously not during installation) and
> architecture-independent.
> 
> For example, /usr/share/dict/words is the current system dictionary,
> which meets both requirements.  Man pages also meet both requirements
> and go in /usr(/local)/share/man (for historical reasons there is a
> symlink at /usr/local/man to /usr/local/share/man).  Preformatted man
> pages in plain text or HTML, being writable, are supposed to go in
> /var/cache/man, but not every distro does this.
> 
> Stuff in /var is intended to be mutated in normal operation, like
> /var/log (syslogs) or /var/mail.  In principle, if /usr and /var are
> different partitions, you can mount /usr read-only except when
> installing software (it can even be shared between homogeneous
> computers using NFS), whereas /var must be mounted read-write and is
> specific to a particular computer.
> 

Thanks. This was the information I was looking for.


cheers,
felix