lapack 3.0 (OpenGL and ncurses maintainers please take note)

Charles Wilson cygwin@cwilson.fastmail.fm
Sat Jul 2 02:35:00 GMT 2005


James R. Phillips wrote:

> Are there any other official packages that install to /opt?  I don't have an
> /opt at all in my cygwin directory tree.  I am reluctant to create a new
> top-level directory just for part of one package.

Not yet. IIRC, the existence of /opt has gotten the go-ahead approval 
from cgf (& Corinna?) -- but to date, nobody has wanted to be the first 
to "split off" from the main /usr tree.  And that's a GOOD thing...

 From the original post where I raised the issue:
http://www.cygwin.com/ml/cygwin-apps/2003-04/msg00305.html

"Now, if adopted, I believe that the /opt tree should be RARELY used.  I
hope we don't see an explosion of official cygwin packages that use it;
MOST packages should continue to go into /usr (or /usr/X11R6/) as 
before. Right now, the only candidates for /opt that I can think of are:
kerberos, cvsnt, and the "gnu tool replacements" that ship with ast-ksh."

There was a fair bit of discussion concerning ast-ksh and its tools 
about six months ago (maybe longer), but I believe that those folks 
decided to (a) keep their cygwin packages of ast-ksh separate from our 
mirror system (b) install directly into /usr/bin.  But I could be wrong.

My old (unsupported, unofficial) kerberos port doesn't install into 
/opt, but if I ever get around to spinning a new version it will go there.

In answer to a question you asked later in the thread concerning man 
pages and such, it's all spelled out in the FHS -- but I quote again 
from the above listmessage:

------- begin quote -------
For more information on the /opt heirarchy, see

http://www.pathname.com/fhs/2.2/fhs-3.12.html

Basically, a package to be installed under /opt creates an entire tree:
/opt/<package>/bin
/opt/<package>/lib
/opt/<package>/share
/opt/<package>/man
/opt/<package>/info
/opt/<package>/etc (*)
/opt/<package>/var (**)

(*)  contents may be targets of symlinks originating in /etc/opt/
(**) may be a symlink to /var/opt/<package>/

The package will look for its config files (if any) in
/opt/<package>/etc/ (e.g. --sysconfdir=/opt/<package>/etc/), the 
symlinks from /etc/opt are placed there to assist the sysadmin.

There's also an optional /opt/bin, /opt/man, /opt/... set of directories
that can OPTIONALLY contain symlinks back to
/opt/<package>/bin/myprog.exe, to prevent PATH / MANPATH / INFOPATH
explosion.  BUT, packages installed into /opt/<package>/ MUST work
properly even without /opt/bin & friends.
------- end quote -------

> 
> Not that this couldn't work.  What were down to is just a preference. 
> Somewhere in opt would work; so would /usr/lib/lapack.

However, I have no objections if you want to use /usr/lib/lapack/ 
instead.  I assume the "roll your own optimized DLLs from -src package" 
procedure will end up putting the new DLLs in...

/usr/bin ?

Will that also replace the import libs (and pseudo-staticlib symlinks to 
them) in /usr/lib/ ?  Or is the DLL interface absolutely unchanged by 
this recompile, so that the "old" import libs are "still good"?

--
Chuck

P.S. I've had some experience with LAPACK and ATLAS on other platforms, 
so I know the trouble it can often be to get this beastie to compile 
correctly -- and optimally.  Kudos for taking on this task!!



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