On Mon, Mar 10, 2008 at 11:50:51AM -0700, Garrett D'Amore wrote:
> The argument that commands which only get started by the GUI should not
> be accessible via /usr/bin (or some other "easily accessible" path, such
> as /usr/gnome/bin or somesuch, ala /usr/dt/bin) is probably being made
> mostly by folks who don't really use a CLI for most of their work.
I live in screen(1) in whatever GUI terminal works best for me wherever
I happen to be. So, ssh to my desktop, attach to my screen, use mutt
for e-mail, CLI tools for practically everything except browsing the web
(but I use lynx for reading HTML e-mail) and viewing PDFs. When I have
to I break out StarOffice. That's my work environment in a nutshell.
You might want to look at my .kshrc.user, .kshaliases and .kshcd files
sometime -- let me know and I'll e-mail them to you.
And trust me, my view is everything I'd run from the CLI belongs in
/usr/bin, with the exception of some admin things that may belong in
/usr/sbin.
I do start firefox, evince, xpdf and soffice from the CLI some times and
some others via the GUI.
In other words: pffft :) :)
> (Now, "helper" applications, such as a program that is really only a
> helper for another GUI application, are a different matter entirely.
> /usr/bin/totem-video-indexer is a good example. I suspect that it
> serves no useful purpose living in /usr/bin.)
Correct. We agree those go in /usr/lib.
> Btw, I'm actually moderately offended that gnome/autoconfig tools seem
> to like to put the "-config" programs in ${prefix}/bin rather
> ${prefix}/lib. These programs are only ever used by
> autoconfig/automake subsystems, when building software. Yes, I believe
> ${prefix}/bin should be for commands that humans type. :-)
But guess what: configure needs to be able to find those! So how will
it if those are not in your $PATH? And what will users think when
configure doesn't do what they think it should? (Hint: most likely
we'll just piss off FOSS developers who find that they have to do things
they'd rather not to build on Solaris.) Users can't be expected to know
what to add to $PATH to get configure to know how to find *-config. No
way.
Nico
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