----- Original Message -----
> Nathan Scott <nathans@xxxxxxxxxx> writes:
>
> > [...]
> > There is a section of /etc/pcp.conf which doesn't meet this
> > need and that is these two lines ...
> >
> > PCP_LIB_DIR=/usr/lib64
> > PCP_LIB32_DIR=/usr/lib
> >
> > I initially looked at simply removing these, since they are not used
> > in the source code directly. However, I later on found they are
> > used in builddefs/buildmacros, which might be used when a third
> > party is building software using pcp-libs [...]
>
> How about a change consisting of moving those two definitions from
> pcp.conf into builddefs, and likely builddefs/buildmacros into
> pcp-libs-devel?
>
> If the pcp sources we ship continue working, and our pmdas continue
> installing, that's good enough.
No, thats not good enough IMO - we need to take steps to prevent
breakage to out of tree PMDAs too. There are very valid reasons
for being out-of-tree - like proprietary h/ware monitoring libs,
etc - and we actively support this as a fine model for people to
use (SGI use this a fair bit for hardware, Aconex use it for the
PMDAs they have for custom in-house software, and I'm sure lots
of other people have done the same over the years).
> We shouldn't hold back cleanups on
> the basis of hypothetical third party packages that could very well
> work with the changes. This is not like a major API/ABI break.
As discussed earlier, I'll revisit this and try to convince myself
once more that this simpler path is indeed fine. But, just moving
things to builddefs doesn't fix the problem (I thought it did, but
you're right - we'd have to move those to -devel as well, else the
problem just moves between files in -libs. Ugh).
So, hmm, I misunderstood and its not as simple a solution as taking
'em out of pcp.conf. And, I'm not liking the alternative a whole
lot on further reflection - as we discussed yesterday, those build
files are part of the PMDA Install runtime for some PMDAs. I also
overlooked the *link-only* requirements some PMDAs have had in the
past (database PMDAs were the classic case) - which means that a
full -devel install is not required to still make use of builddefs
and a PMDA makefile after all (as we thought yesterday). -devel
is a heavy-weight install too, so not a package I'd want as part
of every server install - we should not force that onto folks.
Ah, life's never easy once you scratch the surface. :)
cheers.
--
Nathan
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