On Wed, 2005-11-30 at 02:08, Alan Coopersmith wrote: > Bryan Cantrill wrote: > > Suffice it to say that we have learned the hard way: put it in /usr/bin > > unless there's a conflict that prevents it. > > Though I still get complaints about GNOME being in /usr/bin, since it makes > it harder to install another version and without breaking all the existing > bits of the OS that depend on Sun's version.
It depends on your definition of a conflict. My definition includes anything where you could have different versions of the same utility. What I would like is something like depot or stow, where I can have different versions (or different implementations of the same version) of software packages in their own private area. There is then some mechanism (could be as simple as "add this directory to the PATH") to select a particular personality. You could have a link package that sets one of the versions as the "default" (so it appears in the default PATH). The "throw everything in /usr/bin" approach leads to a number of problems - the current situation with gnome being the prime example. It's hard to have multiple versions installed. Upgrading tends to break things. Because things are integrated it's harder to backport. Dependency hell is inevitable (because there's only one version, you have to upgrade the entire dependency tree in one go). As a system administrator, I'm after clean encapsulation with the ability to see exactly what's installed where, and the ability to upgrade, downgrade, and try new versions without interfering with the rest of the system. As a developer, I'm after having multiple versions of everything under the sun so I can test all the combinations. As a user, I want things to work and I don't want to care where they are. For the first two, shoving everything into one pot is definitely harmful; for the last one what's really needed is user profile management. -- -Peter Tribble L.I.S., University of Hertfordshire - http://www.herts.ac.uk/ http://www.petertribble.co.uk/ - http://ptribble.blogspot.com/
