[lsb-discuss] users being able to use /opt/bin/

Tobias Burnus tobias.burnus at physik.fu-berlin.de
Fri Jul 2 09:15:33 PDT 2004


George Kraft wrote:

>I would like to suggest that we provide "setup-opt.sh" to  symbolically
>links a binary, library, or man page from an
>/opt/{package,provider}/{bin,lib,man} to /opt/{bin,lib,man}
>respectively.  To also create directories /opt/bin/, /opt/lib/, and
>/opt/man/ when needed and appropriately update the system PATH and
>MANPATH.  For example:
>
>	# setup-opt.sh -b /opt/cisco/bin/acu
>  
>
> <programlisting>
> + # setup-opt.sh -b /opt/whizbang/bin/widgets

> + # setup-opt.sh -m /opt/whizbang/man/widgets.1
> + </programlisting>

As an admin I'd prefer to have a simple
  setup-opt --add /opt/whizbang
  setup-opt --remove /opt/whizbang
without the need to find out which binary and manpage belong together etc.

The following is probably overkill, but this would make live easier.

* option to write LD_LIBRARY_PATH, MANPATH, PATH to STDOUT thus that one
  can do a   eval `....`  with support for CSH/POSIX SH.
  Reasoning: Especially nice to allow users their own setup.
  Example: eval `setup-opt --add --env /opt/{foo,bar,foobar}
           eval `setup-opt --remove --env /opt/xyz`

* Simple adding of whole /opt/<package>/ and /opt/<provider>/<packages>
  (may or may not need a config file in the tree above)

* Adding of single binaries (as done above), e.g.
  setup-opt -b -m /opt/cisco/bin/acu
  with m = automatically add manpage/infopage when found.

In order to be really useful, it should be part of some standard, i.e. 
that the administrator knows that it is present. The current package 
provides no advantage to me:
a) setup-opt -b /opt/whizbang/bin/widgets
b) cd /opt/bin; ln -s /opt/whizbang/bin/widgets
For me (b) is faster since I know the syntax of ln.

Other than that: The current script only works with POSIX SH not with CSH.

I 'vote' for having this as part of a distribution with a sample 
implementation; then the script does the right thing (TM) for each 
distribution.


Regards,

Tobias






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