Re: Filesystem standards (was Re: Pcomm and term)
On Thu, 3 Mar 1994, Matt Birkholz wrote:
> Date: Thu, 3 Mar 94 15:17 PST
> From: J Rozes <jrozes@cs.tufts.edu>
>
> I believe the current concensus is that the /usr/local hierarchy is strictly
> for locally written and installed software only, i.e. not the place to put
> optional debian packages like term. Whether it should go in /usr/* or
> /usr/opt/* or /usr/contrib/* needs to be decided still.
>
> Geez, just use /usr/*; let's keep this KISS (or is there a reason not to)?
There are plenty of reasons not to. Some sites have huge servers with
literally thousands of packages installed and don't want to have all of them
clogging up one filesystem. Some people like to keep optional stuff in one
place in case they have to reinstall from the original distribution. Some
people don't want to allocate a gig for /usr because that is where all
optional software must go. The list goes on and on...
It may not seem like a big deal to you, but we have to consider a wide
range of systems in this distribution, from standalone 386's to
giant networks of servers and diskless clients with gigs of software to
share. This seems to necessitate (or so the few hundred plus people on
the FSSTND list seem to think) a structure for installing large and small
optional software on the system.
jonathan
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