Re: netpbm vs. pbmplus
'Michael E. Deisher wrote:'
>
>On Tue, 23 Jan 1996 12:20:43 -0500 (EST), Chris Fearnley <cjf@netaxs.com> said:
>
>> I discussed this with a colleague who has 35 years in the computer
>> industry. He suggested I use the argument that it's easy for people
>> to change their PATH.
>
>Suppose you have twenty users. With this scheme, every time a new
>(big) software package is installed, twenty people have to modify
>their .profile/.cshrc before they can use it. If it's installed in
>/usr/bin, they need do nothing.
As sysadmin you can change the PATH in the /etc files. Now if
everything is in /usr/bin how do you remove the netpbm tools from your
PATH? It's impossible. Putting everything thing in /usr/bin, reduces
flexibility.
>> It's VERY, VERY hard to operate on an enormous directory.
>
>Huh? I'm at a loss to come up with any operation that I would want to
>do that would become "VERY, VERY difficult" if /usr/bin was not
>splintered into lots of pieces.
I'm only suggesting splintering for non-standard, large packages. I'm
thinking of big subsystems like khoros, netpbm, etc that aren't
normally part of a *nix system. I don't feel that these types of
extras belong in /usr/bin.
--
Christopher J. Fearnley | UNIX SIG Leader at PACS
cjf@netaxs.com (finger me!) | (Philadelphia Area Computer Society)
http://www.netaxs.com/~cjf | Design Science Revolutionary
ftp://ftp.netaxs.com/people/cjf | Explorer in Universe
"Dare to be Naive" -- Bucky Fuller | Linux Advocate
Reply to: