Re: gnome-lib and Solaris 7x86

[lopez <robert lopez abq sc philips com>]

To Ben,

I will start out by thanking you for your work. As a person who
volunteers to help others you deserve thanks and not flack.

I do not mean to send you flack. Hopefully just my own opinion and
no more.

> >Which of course explains why Sun by default builds /opt too small
> >to be of use for anything but tiny apps? It of couse explains why I
> >have Sun User Group CD Rom which came out after the use of /opt and
> >continued to use /usr/local?
> 
> /opt is too small by default as is /usr if you put /usr/local there.
> Any *experienced administrator* will know how to work around those
> issues, by having a static configuration where they know where things
> will be loaded, or using judicious use of symlinks into things like
> a big fat 12G /export partition.

Experienced and not experienced admins have to do this all the time.
My point is that neither Sun or HP or others that use /opt began as
ever seeming to mean it for any other purposes than optional
software which was purchased from them. When Solaris first came out
every one I know at Sun advised to continue to use /usr/local and 
they also continued them selves. So, most of us kept using
/usr/local. Since then, both Sun and HP have gone to using /opt 
for much more. Some what late in history; because a very much
larger community is now using /usr/local than is now using /opt.

> 
> >I should always have a choice.
> 
> Don't like it?  Package up your own distribution.  I've got about
> 400 hours over the last 10 months building and customizing the
> distribution.
> 
> And for having a choice, you can put it anywhere you want as long
> as you symlink the directory you want it to load in to the actual
> point it will be loaded in.  That way you get what you want where
> you want it, and all the package can follow the run-time linker
> paths (not requiring a LD_LIBRARY_PATH).  I set it to a static location so I 
> don't have to answer questions when people screwup
> there LD_LIBRARY_PATH.

I will not say that what you are doing is wrong. I do not use
you distribution so I have no problem with it.

I just like /opt for things that I buy from Sun or HP and /usr/local for
all else. I would not expect you or anyone else to change for what
I like. I do usually find most who do such development are open to
to other's opinions. I should have said "I prefer to always have a choice". 

-Robert