[Slackbuilds-users] Two problems writing SlackBuild for mendeley-desktop

[Alan Hicks]

Apologies Grissiom, if you're on our mailing list and receive this
message twice.

On Tue, 1 Dec 2009 09:27:27 +0800
Grissiom <chaos.proton at gmail.com> wrote:

> I'm writing a SlackBuild for Mendeley Desktop
> ( http://www.mendeley.com ), which is a research paper management
> tool. But I found two problems there.
> 
> 1, It's a proprietary software, although you can use for free(free
> beer but not free speech) as long as you agree with it's 'terms and
> conditions'. Is it enough that I notice it in the README and let
> users be aware of it?

That should be fine.  Put it at the top of the README as it's own
sentence/paragraph all by itself so it stands out and I don't think
anyone will mind.  The software may well be proprietary, but we're only
distributing build scripts, not the software or the source code, so
we're not really covered by whatever license that software is under.

> 2, It seems that the package have to make a /share directory. As it
> lays in the very root, I doubt whether it is something that a
> user-space package should do. I know I can link /share to /usr/share
> and pull things there. But we will have a /share eventually.

Now that's ugly as sin in Sunday School.  Are you absolutely certain
that things have to be placed in /share?  I'm thinking that this
software may most properly be placed (nearly) completely under /opt
such as is done with openoffice.org.  If it absolutely has to go
under /share, I guess that's something the admins will have to
consider.  To the best of my knowledge, no software build script has
ever required the creation of a new top-level directory.

-- 
It is better to hear the rebuke of the wise,
Than for a man to hear the song of fools.
Ecclesiastes 7:5
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