Conan-center-index: [question] why conan does not allow share directory

[boussaffawalid]

Hello,

According to https://github.com/conan-io/conan-center-index/blob/master/docs/error_knowledge_base.md#kb-h013-default-package-layout: The only allowed folders are ["lib", "bin", "include", "res", "licenses"].

Is there a specific reason reason why conan decided to use a res directory instead of a share directory ?

share directory is kind of standard location for architecture-independent data like docs, configs ... and lot of projects use the share directory already so I believe patching all of them to use res instead sounds like an unnecessary overhead.

Best,
Walid

[arthur-tacca]

Using share/ instead of res/ would also allow CMake config (i.e. target and version files) to be put in a sensible location - they usually go in share/<packagename>

[Croydon]

Just FYI, we don't want to have docs and CMake config files in packages

Documentations would be barely used from within Conan packages, but would increase package size and regarding CMake config files see https://github.com/conan-io/conan-center-index/blob/master/docs/faqs.md#why-are-cmake-findconfig-files-and-pkg-config-files-not-packaged

[Croydon]

Please also note that this rules only apply for recipes here in the Conan Center Index. In your own recipes you don't have to apply to those rules

[boussaffawalid]

@Croydon I get that, but still share is a standard location that may contains some files required by a package. Like configs, translation files ... so allowing the share directory still valid even with the convention you mentioned above.

[uilianries]

@boussaffawalid res/ is a very old decision, before Conan 1.0. Res is a common folder for Visual Studio.

As @Croydon commented, for CCI we opted for removing docs and cmake files, because our intention is distributing libraries and binaries, rarely are the cases where we need to package a config file.

Conan also manipulates CMAKE_MODULE_PATH, so there is no problem removing share and using lib/cmake/xxx/ instead, it's an automatic process.

The share/ folder is well ported for Linux, but on Windows this is not true. I'm a Linux user, so I also prefer share/, but I see no problem using res/ instead, as Conan manipulates everything.

If you are confident about using share/ for your company and think that's a good idea, please, open an issue for https://conan-io/conan/issues