Re: [gentoo-user] KDE-4.1.3 + KDE-3.5.9 = messed up KDEDIRS ?

["Dmitry S. Makovey" <dmitry@athabascau.ca>]

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On November 12, 2008, Volker Armin Hemmann wrote:
> > wouldn't call it stupid though. FHS compliance is a good thing (I'm a
> > sysadmin so I really appreciate when things can be easily located
> > universaly).
>
> why? the FHS is a stupid standard. Why is following stupid standards a good
> thing? What next? LSB compliance - because it is great to be broken by
> definition?

any consistency on a system is a good thing. when you deal with N systems you 
really appreciate when things are easily located and could be deducted easily 
even if you don't know where they are. Any standard could easily be 
called "stupid" but in absense of better alternatives I'd rather 
have "stupid" standard than none. 

> > I think what failed is communication on that change. In
> > developers defense I'd say that we're dealing with ~arch packages here so
> > we've been warned they'll be somewhat not-so-stable. What I think needs
> > to happen is gentoo users have to be warned in big red letters everywhere
> > possible when upgrading from KDE3 to KDE4 to make firm decision whether
> > to use "kdeprefix" or not.
>
> it would have been better to NOT introduce that kdeprefix flag and instead
> introducing a FHS flag - which should have been off by default. The current
> way - kdeprefix to get sane behaviour, that turned off, changing the
> default behaviour is either stupid or evil.

see, that depends on your perspective and long term goal. Like Alan mentioned 
in his post: if long-term strategy is to have gentoo more FHS-friendly (for 
whatever reasons) then default compliance is a good thing, if long-term 
solution is to keep doing things in non-FHS-way (a.k.a. gentoo-way ;) ) then 
your suggestion is a more viable one. So the real question you want to 
ask: "Is gentoo as a whole intends to be FHS compliant in the future? What 
are the reasons for that? Can I opt-out?". For myself I think I know answers 
for the last two, but for you, I guess you'd have to find out yourself. What 
would be interesting to know for the entire group is the answer to the first 
question: "Is gentoo as a whole intends to be FHS compliant in the future?". 
Does anybody know the answer?

> > Enforcing proper FS layout is a good thing IMO. Just needs clear
> > communication before marked as stable :)
>
> Like making kde update interactive? Require a 'yes, I know about kdeprefix'
> dialog box?

no. there are simplier alternatives. Read Alan's post, and as an alternative 
here's my take: you can fail building any kde build if state of "kdeprefix" 
is undefined in /etc/make.conf. So you'd have to have that either explicitely 
enable or disable there. Not sure if that'd be easy to implement with current 
portage EAPI (not flaming - just don't know ;) )

> kde has always been in its own directory tree. /opt back in the suse days
> for example. Elderly kde documentation told people to install kde in its
> own sub tree - and I loved that. I always hated gnome for cluttering /usr
> with its garbage. Having a big project like kde in its own tree has a
> bazillion of advantages.

I can list quite a few disadvantages as well. So it boils down to the matter 
of personal preference and the direction that gentoo dev team chose for the 
future. 

-- 
Dmitry Makovey
Web Systems Administrator
Athabasca University
(780) 675-6245

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