[rt-devel] mason_data and session_data, cache or lib?

[Stephen Quinney]

On Thu, Jun 05, 2003 at 07:52:05PM +1000, Jamie Wilkinson wrote:
> This one time, at band camp, Stephen Quinney wrote:
> >  prefix:               /usr/share/request-tracker3
> >  exec_prefix:          /usr
> 
> I disagree with this distinction, it doesn't make sense given the usual
> defaults that packages take.  Since RT is an architecture neutral app, you
> don't need to make prefix and exec_prefix separate.  In fact I'd be
> surprised to see any recent Debian package with prefix and exec_prefix not
> the same.

Not sure what differences this makes to the actually layout of the
package in the FHS in the case of RT. I'll investigate some more.

> >  sysconfdir:           /etc/request-tracker3
> erk.  So much typing!
> 

We chose the request-tracker3 name as there is already a package
called request-tracker (version 2 of RT) and we needed to make the
distinction clear. We also chose to use the long name in the directory
names so that it's clear to sysadmins what the directory is for and
which package it is associated with.


> >  libdir:               /usr/share/perl5
> 
> As John Stoffel pointed out, RT isn't actually a generic perl library, so
> it's probably better to put the backend of it into /usr/lib/rt

As the RT libraries are architecture independent /usr/share/rt would
be better than /usr/lib/rt, certainly in Debian we would use
/usr/share for them.

> 
> >  logfiledir:           /var/log/request-tracker3
> 
> I chose /var/log/rt

See my notes about /etc/request-tracker3

> 
> >  localstatedir:        /var/run/request-tracker3
> >  masonstatedir:        ${localstatedir}/mason_data
> >  sessionstatedir:      ${localstatedir}/session_data
> 
> This I really disagree with.  I re-read the FHS specification, and given the
> descriptions for /var/run, /var/cache, and /var/lib, /var/cache is
> certainly the best location for masonstatedir and probably sessionstatedir,
> and maybe /var/lib for sessionstatedir.  /var/run's description seems to
> indicate that it is for files related to the actual running of a process,
> such as pid files; and if session data is supposed to survive a reboot then
> this directory is certainly not the place for it.

I will take a look at those bits again, I find it a bit unclear as to
what the differences in /var/run, /var/cache and /var/lib really are
in situations like this.

Thanks for the comments,

Stephen Quinney