Re: GNU System Explanation

[Claudio Fontana]

--- "Richard M. Stallman" <address@hidden> ha scritto: 

> In my design, /packages is where you create the
> symbolic link
> to install a package.

Could you elaborate on this, as to avoid any
confusion?

Please correct me where I am wrong:

/packages/package_name itself is a symlink.
It points to a real installation directory, which
contains only files pertaining to that package.
For example,

$ ls -l /packages/libtool-1.5.22
lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root 19 Feb 8 23:58
/packages/libtool-1.5.22 -> /usr/local/libtool-1.5.22

$ cd /usr/local/libtool-1.5.22
$ find .
./bin
./bin/libtool
./bin/libtoolize
./share
./share/aclocal
./share/aclocal/libtool.m4
./share/aclocal/ltdl.m4
./share/libtool
./share/libtool/libltdl
./share/libtool/libltdl/COPYING.LIB
./share/libtool/libltdl/README
./share/libtool/libltdl/configure.ac
./share/libtool/libltdl/Makefile.am
./share/libtool/libltdl/ltdl.c
./share/libtool/libltdl/ltdl.h
./share/libtool/libltdl/config.guess
./share/libtool/libltdl/config.sub
./share/libtool/libltdl/install-sh
./share/libtool/libltdl/missing
./share/libtool/libltdl/ltmain.sh
./share/libtool/libltdl/acinclude.m4
./share/libtool/libltdl/aclocal.m4
./share/libtool/libltdl/Makefile.in
./share/libtool/libltdl/configure
./share/libtool/libltdl/config-h.in
./share/libtool/config.guess
./share/libtool/config.sub
./share/libtool/install-sh
./share/libtool/ltmain.sh
./share/info
./share/info/libtool.info
./share/info/dir
./lib
./lib/libltdl.so.3.1.4
./lib/libltdl.so.3
./lib/libltdl.so
./lib/libltdl.la
./lib/libltdl.a
./include
./include/ltdl.h

Then there's some magic at work (translator) that
joins all the stuff reachable via /packages and
exposes the result as managed directories /bin,
/share, /lib, ... which are read-only and writable
only by the translator.

However, I do not understand why the need for the
symlink.
The packages could be directly installed in
/packages/package_name/ as a real directory, with the
same result. What am I missing here?

> I don't insist on that name.  However, I think the
> name "stow" is not
> meaningful and should be replaced with something
> meaningful.  If not
> "packages", then "installed" or "installation".

"packages" sounds better than stow, installed, or
installation to me.
Some alternatives:
"software",
"pkg", 
"sw" [this one could stand for both software and stow]

But "packages" is already ok.

CLaudio



        

        
                
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