Re: Ghostscript packaging for X11, non-X11 versions

[Christopher Faylor <cgf at redhat dot com>]

On Sat, Jul 06, 2002 at 06:57:23AM -0700, Dario Alcocer wrote:
>Are there any guidelines or suggestions regarding packaging
>source, patches and binaries for programs (like Ghostscript)
>that can be built for either Cygwin or Cygwin/XFree86?
>
>Unless I hear a very compelling reason to do otherwise, I'm
>planning on releasing three binary packages and a single
>source package:
>
>  * A ghostscript-base package, which includes all the
>    common files required by both program versions.
>
>  * A ghostscript package, which contains only the non-X11
>    version of gs.exe, and a README describing the build
>    process.
>
>  * A ghostscript-x11 package, which contains only the X11
>    version of gs.exe, possibly renamed to xgs or gsx, and
>    a README describing how to build it for XFree86.
>
>  * A source package which contains all the patches for both
>    builds and both README files.
>
>I'm picking this packaging method so that both X11 and non-X11
>versions can both be installed, without getting into problems
>when un-installing one and not the other.
>
>I've looked around in the cygwin-apps archives, and I've not
>found this discussed with respect to other apps (e.g. rxvt)
>that can be built for either Cygwin or Cygwin/XFree86.

That sounds perfect to me.  The only open issue is where to
install the X11 versions of stuff.  I'd been strongly suggesting
that all X applications go into /usr/X11R6/bin but I suspect
that this rule may not have been followed.

Others have pointed out that distributions like Red Hat just put
the X apps directly into /usr/bin, leaving /usr/X11R6/bin for
the actual XFree86 distribution.

Regardless of this, I think it still makes sense to put X apps in
the X-specific bin directory.

Of course, then there is my other rule that X apps live in the
release/XFree86 hierarchy.  I guess I should amend this rule to
mean "strictly X apps".  It wouldn't make sense to scatter your
distribution into different directories when they would nicely
fall into one ghostscript directory and subdirectories.

cgf