Re: NFS directory heirarchy for very heterogeneous environment

[Walter Wong <wcw+@CMU.EDU>]

While we haven't actively worked on depot for a while, you may want to 
consider using it to help manage your /usr/local environment. The URL
is: 
	http://andrew2.andrew.cmu.edu/depot/depot.html

While we use AFS, there are no AFS dependencies (only some AFS
optimizations).

For each operating system, we have a system specific directory, for
example:
	/{beta,gamma}/{solaris2.7,solaris2.6,rh6.1,hpux10.20}/local

Systems that do not run depot locally, just have /usr/local symlinked
to the appropriate directory above.

Systems can run depot locally and thereby have a local cache of the
files in case the fileserver is unavailable.

Software is actually installed into
.../local/depot/<package_name>. Depot is then run to merge all the
packages into one unified view for your /usr/local.

You can also use depot to 'link' system trees together. For example,
if you assume that Solaris 2.6 is binary compatible with 2.7, you can
start out your solaris 2.7 local tree by simply saying all files that
are not in /gamma/solaris2.7/local/depot should come from
/gamma/solaris2.6/local/depot.  As you find packages that are not
compatible or you are updating a package, you can just install it into 
/gamma/solaris2.7/local/depot and it will override the package found
in 2.6.

In some ways all this rambling is a gross simplification. Be sure to
take a look at http://andrew2.andrew.cmu.edu/depot/doc-over.html for
more details.

...and speaking of dogfood, yes, we are still actively using depot. 

Walter