categories of files (was Re: Software installation opinions needed)

[John M. Sellens]

In article <1990Sep26.043825.26682 at maytag.waterloo.edu> gamiddle at maytag.waterloo.edu (Guy Middleton) writes:
|We have a very grandiose software installation doctrine here, and tend to
|subdivide yet further, into these categories:

In article <1990Sep26.210617.12193 at chinet.chi.il.us> les at chinet.chi.il.us (Leslie Mikesell) writes:
|How do you tell which
|pieces belong to which package, and in what order to reconstruct
|things?  

We install all our software off to the side, under a hierarchy
called /software.  OS upgrades can take place independently of this,
modulo the need to update our additions to match OS changes.  Each
software "package" is in a separate hierarchy under /software
(e.g. /software/gcc /software/tex etc.), and each package has an
Install script in it.  Those packages that have to mess with or
replace standard system files do it in the Install script, so
if the OS gets updated, the Install script can be run and all
is well again.

Yet more information:

Each package has a maintainer associated with it, so if you have a
problem with a particular set of software, you know to contact the
person named in the /software/package/.admin/Maintainer file.
Packages can also have system config file fragments (e.g. /etc/services
entries, /etc/inetd.conf entries, cron entries, /etc/rc stuff)
which are files in the package, and are appropriately dealt with
by utility programs.  We don't manually change crontabs, rc scripts,
inetd.conf's, etc.

It's a *gigantic* maze of stuff, but when you're trying to do software
support on 200 or so machines, each with a different administrator,
and a different desired selection of software on 9 (count 'em 9)
different hardware/os combinations, you seem to need a bunch of
rules and a bunch of automation.