[Pkg-crosswire-devel] Module packaging, distribution, and management

[Eeli Kaikkonen]

Norbert Bollow wrote:
> 
> IMO it has been a very broadly accepted standard for a long time that
> stuff which is in /usr but not in /usr/local is subject to management
> by the distro's package management system, and I would consider it a
> bug whenever a program does not respect this principle in its default
> configuration.
> 
 
http://www.pathname.com/fhs/pub/fhs-2.3.html#USRSHAREARCHITECTUREINDEPENDENTDATA

It's possible that the Sword library has a bug in this respect. However, 
it doesn't mean that the package manager is the correct way to handle 
the modules, except in some special cases.

> However I also believe that from the admin's perspective, the various
> programs should adhere to well-established principles like "the
> program is not fundamentally incompatible with my distro's package
> management system", with as few app-specific quirks as possible.
> 

You have good points, but still I think the main problem has been that a 
random module has been installed without asking the user and it wasn't 
possible to uninstall it easily (because the user didn't know how it was 
installed). If the modules are only suggested everything works fine: if 
someone installs a module with the package manager he knows how to 
uninstall it properly. If an ordinary user installs a module with the 
app install manager he knows how to uninstall it. If the admin installs 
a module it's not meant to be removed by ordinary users and can be 
uninstalled by the admin in the same way it was installed. Very simple. 
The application module installers can be run with root privileges but so 
can rm -rf *. It doesn't make it broken even if someone may use it to 
uninstall package data.


--Eeli Kaikkonen