[Infrastructures] Re: Host installs?

[Heilke, Rainer]

> /nonos/admin/perly/bin/perl because
> that is where he always puts it on an Instimatix box, then smack him
> around until he sees the advantage of portable scripts. If you have
> internal developers, sit down with them and show them how their
> application will work better if it has a static install location, a
> machine-specific configuration location and a separate, (possibly)
> shareable data location.

This item can't be stressed enough. There are other considerations that come
into play, here (eg. multiple platforms). Sun has a really old version of
Perl installed in /bin, and the newer versions supposedly "don't work".
Whatever. To maintain script portability, you may have to decide whether to
link this to /usr/local/bin/perl, or whether to link the other direction
(create /usr/local/bin/perl as a link to /usr/bin/perl) on Linux/BSD boxes.
Make the decision one way and/or the other, because there is nothing like
having a different version for each script on each platform, rather than
having one script that tests the platform and runs the appropriate
subroutines. And this is not restricted to the above Perl example...

Just one of the many considerations in heterogeneous environments.

Rainer

(Agreed, excellent discussion. I am continually having to rethink things,
and perhaps change ideas accordingly. Lots of food for thought.)