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Macaulay2 / M2

The primary source code repository for Macaulay2, a system for computing in commutative algebra, algebraic geometry and related fields.
https://macaulay2.com
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Empty Layout directories #1810

Closed d-torrance closed 3 years ago

d-torrance commented 3 years ago

There are three directories referred to in the Layout hash tables which may be empty if Macaulay2 doesn't build any of its dependencies:

           "libraries" => "@librariesdir@/",
           "programs" => "@programsdir@/",
           "program licenses" => "@licensesdir@/",

In the autotools build, all of them are created during make -C libraries. (Until #1803, @librariesdir@ was only created if needed.)

On one hand, they're referred to in the Layout hash tables and in some documentation (here, here, and here), so it would make some sense if they exist despite being empty. But on the other hand, it's odd to be shipping empty directories. (See, for example, the Lintian package-contains-empty-directory warning.)

What would be best?

DanGrayson commented 3 years ago

I think it doesn't matter much now, despite the lintian warning. In the long run, we'll expect to find all needed libraries and programs available as packages, so all the stuff about building submodules and libraries and shipping them with will probably be removed.

d-torrance commented 3 years ago

Sounds good. I'll go ahead and close this then.

(I'm manually removing the empty libraries directory in the Debian package to avoid the Lintian warning, and the other two aren't even installed since they're under $libexecdir, which I don't even bother installing since it's empty.)