Is panel plugins integration broken at the moment?

[Carol Spears]

On Sat, Oct 29, 2005 at 06:27:14PM +0200, Benedikt Meurer wrote:
> Brian J. Tarricone wrote:
> >>>>>- some documentations say libexec was deprecated,
> >>>>
> >>>>Please provide the URL of an authoritative source that states this.
> >>>>Even then, this isn't really relevant.  If a distro packager (or user)
> >>>>wants to, they can simply provide --libexecdir= to configure.
> >>>
> >>>i had expected that you were able to remember this thread and to
> >>>investigate the links yourself, but here they are:
> >>>http://www.pathname.com/fhs/pub/fhs-2.3.html
> >>>http://www.humbug.org.au/talks/fhs/usr.html
> > 
> > I had remembered from last time, but the URL provided didn't say
> > anything about libexec being deprecated.  At any rate, the first URL you
> > just gave me doesn't mention libexec at all (which doesn't mean you
> > can't have one, just that it's not specified in the FHS).
> > 
> > The second URL you provide describes libexec in the exact manner that
> > the panel is currently using it, and says nothing about it being deprecated.
> 
> I'm not sure, but IIRC the "don't use libexec, but lib or sbin" delusion
> was started by the Debian guys for some weird reason, and its part of
> the Debian Policy. Well, that's ok. Everybody is free to write
> everything. We could also setup a document which tells people "don't use
> bin, but install all your binaries to /tmp instead". I don't think
> anybody would care about this policy, and in the same manner there's no
> need to care about the Debian Policy.
> 
debian (and other distributions) can be a real pita.  for instance, i
only use xfce because of how debian was handling other things at the
time.  now i read on blogs that ubuntu is passing out cd's by the
thousands, i wonder if they are using that policy as well. or if they
are using FHS specifications, and if so, from what year.

probably the very best policy is to ignore people like me who have only
a little experience with things on the user end and start such silly
email with busy developers....

one thing to note, if i had done the right thing and looked for the
online documentation myself (not bothering otherwise busy people with my
imaginary file system) i should have used a web search.  searching on
fhs shows this:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=fhs&btnG=Google+Search
i searched for five search pages and could not find the url that
mentioned libexec.  how would i know fhs though?
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=filesystem&btnG=Google+Search
the second search is interesting since gmail filesystem is moving up in
rank and perhaps might be the most important filesystem!  and oops,
there is another url, this one actually has some style to it that also
does not include /usr/libexec in its hierarchy:
http://www.tldp.org/LDP/Linux-Filesystem-Hierarchy/html/usr.html

> If its really part of the FHS, then... well, who cares? If FHS tells me
> to delete /libexec (and thereby /libexec/ld-elf.so.1), I would need to
> be really stupid to follow this avice.
> 
i guess they did not delete it or ask you to delete it, they just did
not include it in newer versions of their online documentation.  the
only real problem that any development group would face by using it is
having some idiot wonder the reason it is there and perhaps coming up
with imaginary reasons (for example, needing to run a nfs emulator to be
able to move files back and forth from windows to linux, or whatever
samba does that i do not seem to need).

> xfce4-session already uses libexec to install it's helper applications
> which don't belong to bin, sbin or lib and I don't see any need to
> change that, because it's exactly what libexec is meant for.
> 
used to be made for.  i wonder if the first url is ever updated if it
will still be there.

i can see the good sense in having to explain it to people like me over
and over again.  i think that first url will not be updated since it
seems to be part of a "talk" or speaking event from the past:
http://www.humbug.org.au/talks.php#past

maybe some time could be spent to make an explanation of the filesystem
as it is being used here.

thank you and good luck,
carol