Author: Vic Date: To: Hampshire LUG Discussion List Subject: Re: [Hampshire] Application installers
> I am not a packaging guy so please correct me if I am wrong, but I > thought you could only have one version of a package installed at a
> time?
Nope. You can have multiple versions installed providing they do not
clash. You can have multiple clashing versions installed if you play with
the installation paths a bit...
Three kernel packages, because I haven't bothered to dung out the obsolete
ones.
> For various reasons we may also need more than one version of our own
> application installed. Particularly for support.
Again, not normally a problem.
> Agreed, and our default is to install into the user's home area too.
> But since our software is rather big (from about 2GBytes for a minimal
> install) that is a lot of disk space to use up if there are multiple
> users on a single system. So in that case we recommend root create a
> directory under /opt which is r/w by normal users (or at least those
> in the relevant group) and then have one user do the install.
So your system requires the root user not to install the software, but to
create an area with broken security so that others can. I don't see that
as a step forward...
> This actually makes sense even if there is only one user when you
> think about backups.
No, I can't see that. I think it makes no sense under any circumstance.
Sorry, an' that...
