[vtkusers] vtk3.2 Beta rpm feedback

[James E. Fowler]

Prabhu Ramachandran wrote:
> Well IMHO, including the Makefile is really of not much use.  This is
> because each build of vtk is different and creating a Makefile that
> works under all situations is complicated.  Even if the system.make,
> user.make that were used while making the rpm were included it wouldnt
> work.  This is because the way the VTK sources are organized.  It is
> not possible to precompile all the examples and package them either.
> This would simply add to the size of the RPMS. The best option would
> be to make a Makefile specifically for the RPM.  This is a bit of a
> pain.  However, it is not hard to compile the c++ examples by hand.
> So IMHO I think the Makefiles should not be included.

Yes, now that I think about it, you're right - there's no real reason to
include the Makefiles. Even if you were able to have functioning
Makefiles, the user could easily choose to install the RPMs in a
location other than /usr since they're relocatable. That would break the
Makefiles.

> I dont know about the FHS, but in Debian all examples go into
> /usr/share/doc/<package>/examples/ would this be okay for the RPMs
> too?

The /usr/share/doc hierarchy is a very reasonable place for them to go,
perhaps even better than /usr/share/vtk since the examples essentially
document how to use the code.

FYI, you can find the FHS at http://www.pathname.com/fhs

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|                         Dr. James E. Fowler                         |
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|                     Mississippi State University                    |
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|                        fowler at ece.msstate.edu                       |
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