Greetings,

I have been working on packaging autotest and it's dependencies for use
in Fedora.  During the formal review of autotest-client for inclusion
into Fedora [1], several concerns were raised around the filesystem
layout used in the Fedora autotest-client package.  Specifically, how
all content lives under '/usr/local/autotest'.  Before attempting to
address this, I wanted to bring the issues to the list for a wider
discussion.

The first issue regards the placement, and usage, of files and
directories beneath /usr/local/autotest [2].  For example, in Fedora,
the following locations are accepted:
      * python libraries -> typically /usr/lib/pythonX.Y/
      * binaries/executables -> /usr/{sbin,bin} or /{sbin,bin}
      * pid files -> /var/run/
      * log files -> /var/log/
      * Config .ini files -> /etc/
      * test results/ -> unsure, possible somewhere under /var

Turns out, this won't be too much trouble to accommodate from a
packaging perspective.  I don't think it's uncommon to for the
packaging-layer to rework where content lives on the system.  However, I
think a potential obstacle might be ...

The second issue concerns removing any hard-coded references to the
directory '/usr/local/autotest'.  In order to accomplish the shuffling
of files in accordance with packaging guidelines, I need to
remove/adjust any references to '/usr/local/autotest' and be sure that
autotest can function with it's files in standard system locations
(e.g. /usr/sbin/, /usr/lib/pythonX.Y, /etc/ ...).

Some questions to initiate discussion ...

     1. Before I proceed, has this topic come up before?  Has anyone
        looked into what it would take to remove any hard-coded
        '/usr/local/autotest' references?
     2. There are several global_config.ini configured directories
        already, should I persue this same mechanism to further
        accommodate autotest content (bins, libs, cfgs, logs etc...)
        living in system-wide locations?
     3. Other solutions not considered?
     4. Would there be any interest in reviewing any proposed patches
        for inclusion into autotest?

Many thanks,
James

[1] https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=548522
[2] http://www.pathname.com/fhs/pub/fhs-2.3.html#USRLOCALLOCALHIERARCHY
[3]
http://jlaska.fedorapeople.org/autoqa/0004-Change-usr-local-to-usr-share.patch
[4] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging:Guidelines

Attachment: signature.asc
Description: This is a digitally signed message part

_______________________________________________
Autotest mailing list
[email protected]
http://test.kernel.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/autotest

Reply via email to