Re: Namespace Management in GNOME

[Dan Winship <danw novell com>]

On Thu, 2004-12-02 at 15:18 -0600, Brian Cameron wrote:
> 1) Data is stored in directories with names that are too generic
> 2) Furthermore, GNOME clutters the /usr/share directory
> 4) Files aren't always installed to the most sane location.  For
>     example, there are a number of programs that GNOME currently
>     installs to /bin that should probably be in /libexec

Different OSes/distros are going to have different conventions here
though. Most Linux distros seem to embrace the per-package "clutter"
in /usr/share rather than trying to avoid it. (I have directories owned
by 85 different packages in my /usr/share right now.) Likewise, many
(most?) Linux distros don't use libexec at all (which contributes
heavily to GNOME hackers forgetting to use it where appropriate).

OTOH, Sun isn't the only OS that doesn't like the default locations some
of the packages use. Most of the patches against GNOME packages in the
NetBSD packages collection these days are to tweak things like
documentation and config file install locations.

Maybe what we need is just a better set of directory-specifying flags
for configure, and mandate consistent handling of those flags across all
GNOME packages.

-- Dan