[Development] Summary of renaming changes

[Knoll Lars]

Hi Joerg,

On Oct 21, 2012, at 5:48 PM, Bornemann Joerg <Joerg.Bornemann at digia.com> wrote:

> Hi Thiago,
> 
>>>   This *is* the problem of Linux distributions. FHS doesn't cover this
>>> problem properly and this is the point where it should be fixed.
>>>   You're making life harder for every platform - not only Linux - by
>>> fixing their problem.
>> 
>> You may argue that case, but they'll argue back that this solution has worked
>> quite well for almost all packages for over a decade.
> 
> OK I'm accepting reality and that what worked for so long is assumed to
> be the right way and won't be changed. I'm even going so far to admit that 
> we might have to act. :)
> 
> What still is questionable is the way of doing that. What we have is a naming 
> clash between two installed versions. IMHO the least elegant way is to rename 
> all relevant files in one of these versions. For these kind of conflicts there
> are namespaces. Every file system that's relevant to our case has a namespace 
> feature: subdirectories.
> 
> Apparently this feature is out for /usr/bin. Even /usr/bin/X11 is a symlink to
> /usr/bin on Debian wheezy that I'm using here. But hey, here's an interesting
> example: llvm. Binaries are in /usr/lib/llvm-3.0/bin and /usr/bin contains
> symlinks to its contents. These symlinks end with llvm's version number.
> Same pattern applies to the 2.7 llvm version that's installed here.
> Why can't we have something alike for Qt?
> 
> If your fear is that different distros use different link names then please take
> these things into consideration:
>   - Our target audience is software developers, they'll be able to enter qmake, 
>     press TAB twice and choose the right link. (Well if the version number is
>     appended and not prepended, anyways.)
>   - We can publish a recommendation for packaging Qt.
>   - Some distros might want to use a different naming scheme.
> 
> If all of this is totally impossible then please add a configure option that's 
> off by default, like -qtlibinfix.

Please read Thiago's latest proposal (see thread 'New  proposal for tools naming'). It proposes something very similar to what you are asking for here.

Cheers,
Lars