Re: [forward] FHS pre-2.1 draft #3 on web site

[Philip Hands <phil@hands.com>]

Joseph Carter <knghtbrd@debian.org> writes:

> Anyway, if those dirs should exist (and I think they probably should as
> they're useful for providing symlinks to other dirs to keep paths and the
> like sane) should we actually create them or rely on the sysadmin to do
> that if they plan to use those dirs (I believe they were reserved for
> sysadmin's use) or what?

I think we should agree to do absolutely nothing with the /opt
directory, other than create it.

If a local sysadmin wants to put /opt/foo/bin/bar in their path, we
should probably suggest that a reasonable way to do it would be to do
this:

  ln -s /opt/foo/bin/bar /usr/local/bin

but if they choose to put /opt/foo/bin in their path, that's up to them.

If ISV's take to actually doing something like this in their install
scripts:

  ln -s /opt/foo/bin/bar /opt/bin

then /opt/bin is going to have all the name space pollution problems
that /opt was supposed to help us avoid, so I'd say we'd be better off
not even creating the directory.

As always, we still provide sysadmins with large caliber firepower for
pedal auto-mutilation, so if they want to create /opt/bin it's up to
them.

Cheers, Phil.