OFA is great. Makes it very easy for new folks to join a project and almost immediately be effective.
One area that OFA does not cover is patch management. With OPatch, we now have a mechanism to determine what patches have been applied. What is needed is a standard way to store patches. This isn’t a complex problem. Many organizations have a repository or dumping ground for their patches. What is needed is a standard way to store these patches and installation binaries so that we can leverage similar efficiencies that achievable under OFA.
Why is a standard needed? Most standards are not easily embraced because it involves change, and why would anyone what to change what is working for them? I agree. If you have an organization or standard mechanism for dealing with these bits, then great! Maybe you can even share your wisdom here. Let’s throw that word ’standard’ out too — this is just one way of dealing with the issues, and if it works for you and you want to use, then great! [ I need to stop that -- I'm starting to sound like Tony the Tiger ].
So where should these bits live? ORACLE_BASE seems like the logical place as this already contains the administrative, product, and inventory directories. The standard directory names bin, src, and lib aren’t appropriate. As we will be storing patches and installation binaries distributed by Oracle, dist is a decent choice for a directory name to store these bits.
