On Thu, 2012-12-20 at 23:24 -0800, Toshio Kuratomi wrote:
Since neither of these things are required by the packaging
guidelines, I believe the premise of your argument is deeply flawed.
1) As i've said before, there is no packaging guideline
requirement
that maintainers restrict helper applications to libexec. Helper
apps can go in either %{_libdir} or %{_libexecdir} (and really, helper
apps should be able to go in %{_prefix}/lib under a simple multilib
exemption rather easily now as well.)
The guideline is written to suggest that use of libexecdir is strongly
favoured, and use of libdir is distinctly a fallback position:
"Fedora's rpm includes a macro for libexecdir, %{_libexecdir}. Packagers
are highly encouraged to store libexecdir files in a package-specific
subdirectory of %{_libexecdir}, such as %{_libexecdir}/%{name}."
Note 'highly encouraged'.
" If upstream's build scripts do not support that, %{_libdir}/%{name} is
a valid second choice."
Note 'valid second choice'.
The text is clearly intentionally written to suggest that libexecdir is
much the preferred option and libdir/name a regrettable fallback plan.
3) lennert is not asking that we give permission for packages to use
something other than %{_libexecdir} if upstream doesn't support it.
He's asking us to forbid use of libexecdir within fedora packages no
matter what the package maintainer and upstream support.
Well, you can gloss it as 'forbid' or 'stop promoting'. Same difference,
but it reads a lot differently. Let's face it, package maintainers and
upstreams usually only support libexecdir because RH-land pushes it.
I do apologize for somewhat derailing things towards the libexecdir
discussion, though, as I missed the point about the real question here
being between /lib/foo and $libdir/foo . The libexecdir thing is kind of
a tangent and probably should be split out if we're going to keep
talking about it.
--
Adam Williamson
Fedora QA Community Monkey
IRC: adamw | Twitter: AdamW_Fedora | identi.ca: adamwfedora
http://www.happyassassin.net