Re: How to use INSTALL_LOCATION with system directories

[Lucas Russo via Tech-talk <tech-talk at aps.anl.gov>]

Regardless of the location our sites decide, does it make sense to try

to support that use case straight out of the box (box = epics base makefile rules)?

I don't really care about the staging area, that being out of source build or not,

so INSTALL_LOCATION could be $(TOP) or something I have write access to,

that is fine. I think I'm just concerned with the final installation step or FINAL_LOCATION,

from what I understand now.

So, does it make sense to add or split rules in EPICS base (maintaining

backwards compatibility) to provide that?

Something like:

make build

sudo make FINAL_LOCATION=/opt/test install

Or whatever target name to compile and one target for installing the binaries/libs/etc?

Lucas

On Tue, Oct 10, 2023 at 10:01 AM Abdalla Ahmad <Abdalla.Ahmad at sesame.org.jo> wrote:

I agree. As you said, you could simply install it at your home directory and append to the PATH variable, for me when I developed the RPM packages for EPICS base and most of its support modules and extensions, I chose “/opt” just for the convention, my original target was to streamline the process of installing EPICS base and needed drivers because it became more of a repeated routine with time, we now just do “yum install epics-base stream-device” and we have a complete stream-device support ready.

 

Best Regards,

Abdalla.

 

From: Maren Purves <m.purves at eaobservatory.org>
Sent: Tuesday, October 10, 2023 10:54 AM
To: Abdalla Ahmad <Abdalla.Ahmad at sesame.org.jo>
Cc: Lucas Russo <lerwys at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: How to use INSTALL_LOCATION with system directories

 

Yes, agree.

But, while I'm a kinda surrogate system administrator, I'm not a system administrator :), so unless I was to e,g, install a new version of a compiler I  wouldn't write into it.

 

Maren Purves
Head of Instrument and Telescope Software
East Asian Observatory / JCMT

 

On Mon, Oct 9, 2023 at 9:48 PM Abdalla Ahmad <Abdalla.Ahmad at sesame.org.jo> wrote:

To my knowledge, the difference is just a convention. If I remember correctly, the Linux FHS states that “/opt” is used for 3^rd party packaged applications, while “/usr/local” is used by system administrators to install software locally (using “make” for example) so that it does not override any system files.

 

Best Regards,

Abdalla.

 

From: Tech-talk <tech-talk-bounces at aps.anl.gov> On Behalf Of Lucas Russo via Tech-talk
Sent: Tuesday, October 10, 2023 10:08 AM
To: Maren Purves <m.purves at eaobservatory.org>
Cc: EPICS Tech Talk <tech-talk at aps.anl.gov>
Subject: Re: How to use INSTALL_LOCATION with system directories

 

Hi Maren,

 

I think my question is why not? That's one usual place where you

install binaries/libaries in a linux system that is not a package 

(.deb, .rpm). To my knowledge the recommendation is /usr/local

for "local" packages.

 

Lucas

 

On Mon, Oct 9, 2023 at 8:25 PM Maren Purves via Tech-talk <tech-talk at aps.anl.gov> wrote:

The part I don't understand is why you want to install it in system space in the first place.

We never have. Install it somewhere you have write access to and add that to your $PATH?

 

Maren Purves

Head of Instrument and Telescope Software

East Asian Observatory/JCMT

 

On Mon, Oct 9, 2023 at 5:28 AM Ralph Lange via Tech-talk <tech-talk at aps.anl.gov> wrote:

On Mon, 9 Oct 2023 at 17:03, Jure Varlec via Tech-talk <tech-talk at aps.anl.gov> wrote:

On 10/9/23 16:15, Lucas Russo via Tech-talk wrote:

Caution: This email originated from outside of Cosylab.

 

Hi Ralph, Abdalla,

 

I understand. Because there's no separate "installation phase" it

doesn't seem possible to achieve what I was thinking.

 

Thanks,

 

Lucas

Hi Lucas,

Why not? Unless I misunderstood what you want, you could do

make INSTALL_LOCATION=${HOME}/tmp/staging/ FINAL_LOCATION=/opt/test
sudo mv ${HOME}/tmp/staging/ /opt/test
sudo chown -R epics:epics /opt/test  # Or root, or whatever

Perhaps having the staging directory under $(TOP) or /tmp makes more sense, it depends on your case, but you get the idea. Would this work for you?

 

Or, if you really want to use make, you can obviously use INSTALL_LOCATION for your staging area, FINAL_LOCATION for the target area and add something like

 

final-install:
       mkdir -p $(FINAL_LOCATION); cp -a $(INSTALL_LOCATION)/* $(FINAL_LOCATION)

 

to the end of your top Makefile.

 

Cheers,
~Ralph