Re: Packaging Lua libraries

[Andre Nathan <andre@...>]

On Wed, 2004-03-31 at 13:40, Jamie Webb wrote:
> Other languages have a legacy. Lua doesn't (in this context at least). What 
> purpose could 'backward compatibility' with other languages possibly serve? 

If anything, user-friendliness. At least I would prefer to have
libraries for all languages on a single directory instead of scattered
through the HD. And you will note that even languages without a legacy
(e.g. ruby, ocaml, python) follow this model, just because it's where
people expect to find their stuff.

> The Lua approach thus far has explicity been to do things the best way rather 
> than the backward-compatible way, and that means using the FHS on systems 
> (such as Debian) where policy dictates it.

Each operating system packagers will need to make adaptions for
compliance with the specific hierarchy requirements. We can't predict
which each system's path requirements are, so IMO library writers should
use a "generic" path for installation, and leave the operating system
specific policies for the operating system packagers. Again IMO, the
best route would be following the other languages. At least we don't
violate the principle of least surprise here.

I'm not trying to say that the path I suggested can't be changed. I just
don't want it to change just because of how Debian does it, because
later people will come and demand a change because of how RedHat does it
or because of how FreeBSD does it. As I said, platform-dependent paths
should be left for that platform packagers, and we should provide a
sensible default that tries to install where most people are used to
find this kind of files, thus avoiding surprises.

Just to make it clear, from the list of suggestions I posted, my main
concerns were related to the file naming conventions, and from the
feedback I got so far, there seems to be a general agreement regarding
the suggestions. The path where these files will live is inevitably
going to change from platform to platform.

Best regards,
Andre

-- 
Ambiguity: Telling the truth when you don't mean to.