On 05/10/2011 09:35 AM, Greg Troxel wrote:
I don't see how a layout standard can cover both the BSD and Linux worlds at the same time, unless it has variants. (And then there's Solaris and others.)
We have an "annex" system, which supposedly splits out things that are specific to a particular OS. There's only one annex, though (Linux), and it seems that a lot of Linux-isms found their way into the main document.
It looks like the idea of describing all UNIXes was a goal more than a fact. Given how easy it's been to find them with quick looks on the BSD lists, it seems that no one took the bait.
What would be really useful is a documented notion that all upstream packaegs should be configurable (at ./configure or equivalent time) to put various bits in various places, hopefully using standard directives, so that they can easily be configured to follow FHS on Linux or hier or hier_pkgsrc on BSDs. As a packager, the biggest problem related to this I run into is programs with hardcoded Linux assumptions (although many programs that use autoconf are easy to configure).
I actually strongly agree with this. Even if you limit yourself to Linux, there are changes and features that exist on one distribution but not another.
Do you maintain any documentation of "common Linux-isms" that hinder porting to NetBSD? I suspect that the list would be good developer documentation for more reasons than just porting.