Nicolas Williams wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 10, 2008 at 02:06:55PM -0500, Shawn Walker wrote:
>
>> I think a better way to handle it is as you suggested: only put things
>> intended for "humans to type" in /usr/bin (and thus, the PATH).
>>
>
> Well, I do think that scripts need to be careful to set PATH correctly,
> but still, Garret's autoconf/configure and *-config example is very
> instructive, even if in the opposite way that he intended.
>
> But then, script writing shouldn't be made unnecessarily harder.
>
> Nico
>
Ugh. I just can't seem to resist replying. Sorry in advance....
Looking at *-config, I was bemoaning the fact that these FOSS packages
feel the need to drop their detritus in my path. There are far far
better solutions that could have been done had some actual "engineering"
taken place. (E.g. a common registry, or dot files in ~, or
something.) Heck even manually searching the items in PATH with an
append of "../lib/<pkg-config>" or somesuch.
However, I also understand that we can't change the world.
Unfortunately, it appears that in the current regime, when Linux or GPL
delivers stuff that is basically crap (don't even get me started on
autoconf/automake!), the expectation is that we will ship the same crap,
in more or less the same locations, all to serve the new higher god of
"serendipitous discovery" (or Linux "compatibility".)
Can't say that I'm thrilled that we seem so willing to abdicate our
engineering decisions to FOSS groups who have repeatedly shown (at least
IMO) that they often have little regard for sound architecture, and even
less regard for portability to Solaris or stable interfaces. Oh
well.... hopefully its helping to win hearts and minds somewhere, or
something like that.
-- Garrett
/me longs for the day when Linux was trying to be more like Solaris --
early FSSTND -- that's the precursor to FHS -- were inspired greatly by
Solaris and SunOS, rather than the reverse.
