On Wed, Apr 26, 2006 at 01:28:46PM -0700, Alan DuBoff wrote: > On Wednesday 26 April 2006 09:00 am, Keith M Wesolowski wrote: > > /usr/local is for software installed by the local administrator. > > From my perspective this software is no different than any other software > that > is installed by a local admin. Why would you feel that adding software to > /opt is different than to /usr/local?
the concept is that /opt is for 3rd party "managed/controlled" software. Things under /opt/vendor1 in theory, should be solely controlled by said vendor. No other vendor should be putting softwrae in the directory /opt/vendor1; they should instead use /opt/vendor2 Going by that basis, it would be wrong for "vendor1" to put software into /opt/localsiteadmins. That is for stuff compiled/created/whatever by "local site admins" >From a SVR4 point of view, /usr/local is a conceptual shortcut for /opt/localsiteadmins So, using the original rules, it would be just as wrong for "vendor1" to install into /usr/local There are multiple reasons for this. First of all, because thats reserved for "local site admins". Secondly.. what happens when vendor1 AND vendor2 both decide, "we want our program to exist as /usr/local/bin/program", but each version does different things? > By default all the software builds and installs to /usr/local. It > offers the abiltiy for people to take open sources and build and install them > in the same fashion they are accustomed to on other platforms. but that's exactly it. local site admins may build their own version of software that is not pre-packaged. which means that /usr/local should be kept clean, for exactly that reason: So that 3rd-party binaries of stuff, will not conflict with locallly compiled and tweaked versions of open source utilities and programs.
