[egenix-users] The mxDateTime rpms are non-compliant with the Linux Standards Base

[M.-A. Lemburg]

Stanley A. Klein wrote:
> I don't know about the distutils default.  Perhaps all other Python rpm
> packagers change from the default to /usr/share during rpm packaging.

I think you're mixing something up here: /usr/share is for code and
data which can be shared between platforms (e.g. in an NFS environment).
The /usr/local default stems from the fact that a manually installed
Python version always installs into /usr/local per default and that's
what we are using to build the RPMs.

Now, perhaps you are right in that the RPMs we ship should install
into /usr/share for the doc files and /use/lib/pythonX.X/site-packages
for the rest.

> I have Python 1.5 and 2.1, wxPython, and (I think) some other packages
> installed on my system.  All of them automatically install in /usr/ahare.
> To the best of my knowledge that is where Python packagers are supposed to
> put their packages.  These packages are packaged in compliance with the
> Linux Standards Base specification, which (I understand) may have clarified
> or modified for Linux the definition of what is supposed to go into
> /usr/share versus /usr/local.  (Essentially, all downloaded packages or
> those supplied with distributions go into /usr/share.  I don't recall the
> purpose assigned to /usr/local, except that it may be reserved for uniquely
> local packages developed by the system administrator.)

I don't believe that's correct... /usr/local is reserved for
applications which do not come with your OS distribution. Other
OSes such as Solaris use /opt/local for the same thing.

It just happens that Python has become so popular that the
default "installation" today is the one that comes with the
OS distribution and not the one you built youself.

> mxDateTime is the only Python package installed on my system that I had to
> fix because it installed in /usr/local.  (I fixed it by putting a link in
> the appropriate site-packages directory in the /usr/share tree.)

And that's the correct fix.

I think we'll move to /usr for the upcoming 2.1 release... That
should also make it possible to upgrade RedHat's version of
egenix-mx-base (they call it mx-base for some reason).

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-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
CEO eGenix.com Software GmbH
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