On 25 March 2013 20:16, Ike Devolder wrote:

On Mon, Mar 25, 2013 at 11:08:07AM +0000, Mateusz Loskot wrote:

...

There are two sets of very similar packages for Oracle InstantClient

1) dedicated for version 11.2.0.3.0 https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/oracle-instantclient-basic/

- relies on .zip w/ binaries downloaded by user and copied into location of the unpacked package - installs into /usr - canonical

2) dedicated for version 11.2.0.2.0 https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/instantclient-basic/

- uses manual_download to grab .zip w/ binaries from Oracle, but I doubt it works as Oracle requires to accept license on the website - installs into /opt - is this a good idea?

Also, - oracle-instantclient name prefix seems clearer than instantclient

There is also page Oracle client page on Wiki which is based on the oracle-instantclient-basic package https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Oracle_client

I wonder if and how these two packages could be either 1) merged or 2) unified, so they can be explained in the same article.

Ideally, if they could be merged, but then it would be necessary to detect in PKGBUILD if copied .zip binaries are for 11.2.0.2.0 or 11.2.0.3.0 and future 11 versions, and accept all current InstantClient versions. IMHO, it's enough to check if this is 11.2 or even 11.

FYI, I haven't talked to the maintainers of those packages to avoid generating noise. First, I'd like to learn what are recommended options to handle such split packages of virtually the same software.

It looks like both packages provide the same software.

Yes, though I don't know what's the real difference between 0.2.0 and 0.3.0 version of InstantClient, haven't studied its release notes. Perhaps some users may want to install one or the other, or both

The /usr install is indeed the preferred way in most cases, i think here too.

Yes.

The /opt install can be interesting if you want to run multiple versions of the same application next to each other.

Yes, I can't see any other reason really.

personally i would merge those packages because they provide the same.

when they would be merged the merged package should provide the last version. if it is not possible due to bugs or other problems with the last version it should be stated or claified when someone asks.

It looks they used to be merged, see @Malvineous' comment here https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/oracle-instantclient-basic/?comments=all I haven't heard from Tomato, maintainer of instantclient-*, yet but I asked in comment below instantclient-basic. Best regards, -- Mateusz Loskot, http://mateusz.loskot.net