Re: High powered Debian advocacy?
On Sat, 23 Mar 2002 13:32:00 -0800, Noah Sombrero wrote:
>>
>>I don't understand your problem. Are you out of disc space, or did you
>>just mis-apportion your partitions? Either way the problem is not that
>>packagers set up their apps to reside in /usr. The problem is that you
>>need to re-partition or get another disc.
>
>Inflexibility in the face of limited resources (even if you have 600 gigs
>on your hard drive it is still limited).
Please read FHS. Without picking at nits, everything but /usr is system
related. See /boot, /etc, /home, /var, /sbin, /bin, etc.. /usr is
~the~ secondary hierarchy and basically is the rest of the disc. Along
with /home (for data), /usr (for commands) will be the bulk of most
discs. Granted that this does not allow splitting (easily?) either
across multiple discs, but just what do you require in flexibility? You
can put /usr on that 600 gig disc all by itself if you wish.
>
>>The Filesystem Hierarchy Standards (FHS) http://www.pathname.com/fhs/ do
>>just what you want. By standardizing file locations, you are much
>>better able to control your applications. Would you insist on putting
>>your conf/init files just anywhere?
>
>That is not what I am asking to be able to do. I do want to be able to
>say where Netscape or Siag Office are installed. Not the same thing.
Where is the benefit of being non-standard? Of course you ~can~ put
them anywhere you wish, but you shouldn't expect packagers to go
non-standard. If you require non-standard, you should create your own
non-standard package.
>
>>Or does putting them in /etc, where
>>every programmer knows the path, make sense? Not enough room on your
>>/var partition? Put your log or mail files just god knows where, right?
>>Of course you'll need to hack some source (and compile it yourself) to
>>indicate where to send mail and log info. No biggie, make all
>>programmers include the option in their conf files. Oops, where the
>>hell is that file parked?
>
>Important files need to be where they can be found by file users. Other
>files need only to find themselves.
OK. Important files go into standardized locations (the primary
hierarchy?). Other files go anywhere else. Oh, wait; that's /usr.
>
>>Take a look at the standards. I think you'll see that the end result is
>>to make your life easier where the file system is concerned.
>
>As a programmer myself, I can say that I think that we sometimes
>tend to want to make our own lives easier at the expense of the user.
>Which in the end includes ourselves. False economy.
My coding does not go beyond the trivial in C++ and Java so I'm
definitely a user. As a user, I find the FHS a necessity. When I do
`apt-get install <pkg>`, I very much want to know that the files are put
where I expect them. Should I find pressing need to install elsewhere,
well, that's a doable, too.
As an aside, the literature implies (often explicitly) that Debian is
the most FHS compliant distribution. For this I am thankful.
--
gt
Yes I fear I am living beyond my mental means--Nash
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