Re: Conflict/dependency granularity

[edd@miles.econ.queensu.ca (Dirk Eddelbuettel)]

  Bill Mitchell writes:
  Bill>  The illustration which comes immediately to mind probably isn't a
  Bill> good one.  The spiffy color ls program provided with SlackWare (which
  Bill> I personally don't like and would rather not install) really grabs
  Bill> lots of people.  Not available on your debian system?  No problem.
  Bill> Just let me mcopy it off to flopy disk for you, and you can put it in
  Bill> /usr/bin.
  Bill> 
  Bill> In this particular example, the ls program could no doubt go in
  Bill> /usr/local/bin just as well (though there might be a config file
  Bill> which needs to go in /etc), but there are probably other examples
  Bill> which need to go into /usr/bin.  A cooperating system of programs,
  Bill> possibly, which have it hardcoded to look for one another in
  Bill> /usr/bin.

Disagree. Personally think it 'color ls' is a very useful program, both on
the console and under X11.

My executable lives happily in /usr/local/bin as my local config live
happily in /usr/local/etc.

Guess the main point is that there is a continuum from 'uninitiated user' to
'sophisticated sys.admin.'. We can aim at mostly error-free Debian set-up for
users as 'dumb' as we want, but the 'dumber' we assume they are the harder our
job gets. Gotta draw a line somewhere.

My 0.02$. Cheers,

-- 
Dirk Eddelbuettel		                   
<edd@qed.econ.queensu.ca>