Re: Xconq 7.3 branch created!

[Stan Shebs <shebs at shebs dot cnchost dot com>]

Steve Robbins wrote:
> 
> While you may consider the default values "wrong", they are at least
> widely known.  So it is widely known how to override the defaults to suit
> one's local conventions.

Is the sharedstatedir widely known?  I haven't actually seen anything
use $prefix/com for anything, while my (RH 6.1) /var/lib has cddb,
dosemu, nfs, rpm, svgalib, and texmf, and that's without me having
installed much software!  In fact,  I would appreciate hearing about
any package that actually uses $sharedstatedir.

> One of the strengths of autoconf'd packages --- from this installer's
> point of view --- is that I can set standard things like --prefix, to
> override all the install details.
> 
> Moreover, I *know* how the settings interact.  For example, I know that
> --sharedstatedir defaults to ${prefix}/com, so I know how this gets
> affected when I set --prefix and I know how to set it independently of
> setting --prefix.

You have the advantage of me then...  I've worked with GNU for 10 years,
fulltime for 7 of those, and the autoconf handling of shared state dir
was new to me this week.  Studying the sources closely, it looks to me
like $prefix/com is more of a historical oddity that has never seen
actual use - if it had, it would have run head-on into the problem of
read-only /usr filesystems, and yet the docs don't even mention this
little difficulty.

> Mucking about in configure.in to change well-known defaults just raises
> the burden of installing your package.  Far better, IMO, to leave the
> defaults alone, and detail explicitly (e.g. INSTALL.xconq file) that the
> score file goes into LOCALSTATEDIR.

Our problem here is that autoconf works contrary to the FHS standard,
and by extension, to the Linux Standard Base.  If I were more energetic
on the topic, I would push to get autoconf fixed.  As things stand, the
configury will do the right thing for most installations, but is easily
tweaked (--enable-alternate-scoresdir=/usr/local/com) for others.  And
if there's a huge outcry over Xconq's messed-up installation, then it's
easy enough to change back and put out a patch release.

Stan