Billy! Ques about GNOME_PREFIX=/opt vs. /usr

[Jeremy Utley]

In article <Pine.LNX.4.58.0311252304560.27700 at jyzysf04.jyzpf.pbz>, Bill's LFS Login wrote:
> On Tue, 25 Nov 2003, S. Anthony Sequeira wrote:
> 
>> On Tue, 2003-11-25 at 18:54, Bill's LFS Login wrote:
>> > Before I forget, I wanted to ask this. I would like to have Gnome
>> > installed for my system in /opt. The "pre-reqs" mentions setting
>> > GNOME_PREFIX appropriately and the rest of the Gnome sections have a mix
>> > of /usr and $GNOME_PREFIX for the --prefix param.
>> >
>> > Do I need to use the prefix specified for each section or convert them
>> > all to what I put in my pre-reqs.
>> >
>> > For example, I have GNOME_PREFIX=/opt/gnome-2.4 (IIRC). Later sections
>> > show --prefix=/usr and others show --prefix=$GNOME_PREFIX. Do I use them
>> > as specified or do I convert them all to be the equivalent of my
>> > $GNOME_PREFIX?
>> >
>> > I've agonized over this, trying to figure it out, but my knowledge is
>> > just to limited about the relationships.
>> >
>> I did have this problem the first time I built GNOME.  But in this case,
>> unless things have got very screwed recently FBBG rules.  The book is
>> (was) right with the prefixes.  Mind you, my last build was gnome 2.2,
>> so maybe something got messed in the meantime.
> 
> Well, I've achieved the state where I'm beginning to believe I should
> try to understand what I'm doing. So not knowing all the implications, I
> followed instructions about setting GNOME_PREFIX for /opt/... and then
> made the mistake of *thinking* about that and wondering if there were
> implications to subsequent commands.
> 
> Since the book does not address that issue, I was left to my own
> devices. A dangerous game, indeed.
> 
> Anyway, I'm back to "taking it on faith" that FBBG is the right thing to
> do and I'll worry about understanding why later on. I *hate* that.
> 

The short answer is really that some packages that we build as part of GNOME
in all technicality are not really GNOME-related, but are actually support
libraries.  Sort of like Arts - we build it as part of KDE, it's distributed
as part of KDE, it's required by KDE, but strictly speaking, it's a generic
support lib.  Programs like this go into /usr to be available to all programs,
even if you were to, say, do rm -rf /opt/gnome.

HTH,

-J-