[oi-dev] 1341 Upgrade cmake to the latest version - bitbucket changeset: Commit dcc62cd7b504 - Please review

[Peter Tribble]

On Thu, Aug 11, 2011 at 3:06 AM, Andrew M. Hettinger
<AHettinger at prominic.net> wrote:
> It was removed because there should be nothing in there. The documentation
> EXPLICITLY says that. This document also explicitly lists where additions
> should go (in /opt). This is not exactly a new standard.
>
> That said, why would you look for something in /usr/local?

Because software often *is* installed there. Large amounts of open
source software will put themselves there by default. It's very common
and well known as a location for (non-system) software to be found.

The standards say where the system should put stuff. Users can
put stuff wherever they like. In fact, /usr/local is a very good place
to put stuff precisely because you should be pretty well guaranteed
that you're not going to conflict with anything else.

>If we are just
> going to willy-nilly be adding directories, we should just have it search
> the entire filesystem, it's the only way be sure.
>
> If there is a desire to change from Solaris standards to the Linux Standard
> Base, so be it, but if we are going down that route, I'd like to see it
> explicitly made clear.

This isn't about deviating from standards. The standards say where
the system should place stuff. No one is suggesting we start installing
our software in /usr/local. Users are free to do their own thing, and
having cmake look in a well-known place where they're likely to have
installed software seems to me like a good thing. If this is a
"standards based" install, then it's a no-op. If the user is expecting
cmake to pick up the libwotsit they're just installed there and we
deliberately stop cmake from finding it, then they'll just get pissed off
and regard cmake (and the OS as a whole) as broken. Having it look
in /usr/local last (so it checks all the packaged system locations first)
would seem a reasonable precaution.

-- 
-Peter Tribble
http://www.petertribble.co.uk/ - http://ptribble.blogspot.com/