libexecdir (was Re: Headsup: several packages require .manifest files)

[Yaakov (Cygwin/X)]

On 10/06/2009 07:59, Eric Blake wrote:
> According to Yaakov (Cygwin/X) on 6/7/2009 1:06 AM:
>> [1] Which, AFAIK, should be /usr/lib/git-core per the FHS.
>
> I think I can fix this, but wonder why cygport was setting libexecdir to
> /usr/sbin in the first place.

Because long ago (=as long as I've been using Cygwin) somebody decided so:

http://cygwin.com/setup.html#package_contents

OTOH IMHO this is incorrect:

* libexec programs are not meant for direct execution by any user; sbin 
programs are (by superuser).
* libexec is often deep, which AFAIK /usr/sbin should not be per FHS.

There are a few other ways of handling libexec:

1) GNU autotools uses /usr/libexec.  The problem is that is not 
FHS-compliant, which we generally try to be.

2) Default to /usr/lib.  This will do the right thing when a package 
wants a subdir of libexecdir (e.g. git, gnupg, octave), but 
libexec_PROGRAMS will probably want to override that with a subdir thereof.

Thoughts?


Yaakov