On Sat, May 29, 1999 at 08:06:13AM -0600, Marcelo E. Magallon wrote: > Where should I install X11 binaries? In /usr/bin/X11 or > /usr/X11R6/bin? If I have undestood this correctly, the idea is that > /usr/bin/X11 points to the current X11 release, i.e., if X11R7 comes > out, /usr/bin/X11 will point to /usr/X11R7/bin, right? Maybe. I've long been mulling over the thought of moving X into /usr. That is the traditional reasoning, though, yeah. /usr/bin/X11 points to /usr/X11Rx/bin. > What happens with installed packages? I have foo, which contains: > > /usr/X11R6/bin/foo > > and it's accessible via /usr/bin/X11/foo, but after xlib6g (or > xfree86-common?) decides to change the symlink, /usr/bin/X11/foo > won't work anymore. That's correct. > OTOH, if foo contains > > /usr/bin/X11/foo ...it will break horribly. /usr/bin/X11 is a symlink and dpkg is not very good about following symlinks when it unpacks a package. Use /usr/X11R6/bin/foo instead. See my recent proposed rewrite of section 5.7 for an explanation of this. > after xlib6g changes the symlink, /usr/bin/X11/foo will continue to > work, No, it would never have worked in the first place. Unless, of course, package foo got unpacked BEFORE xfree86-common, which provides the symlinks. But then the installation of xfree86-common would fail. > IFF foo is installed after xlib6g. More important, if foo is > already installed, dpkg will loose track of /usr/bin/X11/foo, because > it's actually installed on /usr/X11R6/bin/foo, but the file list says > it's on /usr/bin/X11/foo, which points to /usr/X11R7/bin/foo. If and when X moves at all, a whole bunch of packages will have to move with it. That's the main reason there hasn't been any such migration yet. > If this is correct, binaries should be installed in /usr/X11R6/bin... > so what's the point of referencing them via /usr/bin/X11? Am I > missing something here? Historical practice. It's also designed to insulate the user and external programs from changes in the installed version of the X Window System. Most X programs don't need to worry about whether X11R5 or R6 is installed, except to take advantage of new features, and to my knowledge all X11 releases are backwards-compatible with previous releases of X11 (X10 -> X11 was the big change that impacted everything). As far as X being tucked away in its own little fiefdom under /usr, my guess is that this is due simply to the fact that X has always been of prodigious size, and this was even more true 10 years ago when a 100 MB drive was a luxury. So system administrators often had no choice but to put X on its own filesystem. Like I said before, we can do away with that, and move everything into /usr. But it will mean changing a heck of a lot of packages. > Either way, I have to fix some of my packages, but I need to know > which one is the proper fix... See my proposed rewrite of section 5.7 elsewhere on this list (I think it is also bug #38212). This has sustained no objections so far; in other week it will be bumped up to amendment status if nothing untoward happens in the meantime. -- G. Branden Robinson | A committee is a life form with six or Debian GNU/Linux | more legs and no brain. branden@ecn.purdue.edu | -- Robert Heinlein cartoon.ecn.purdue.edu/~branden/ |
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