Dermot.McCluskey at sun.com wrote On 05/18/07 10:39,:
> I understand why you did it, but I think the handling of ginstall
> and its manpage is a little unusual: you have linked manpages:
> /usr/share/man/man1/ginstall.1 -> /usr/gnu/share/man/man1/install.1
> but don't have links for the actual command, ie:
> /usr/gnu/bin/ginstall -> /usr/bin/install
>
> Could that be confusing?
>
> Also, you put the "real" file in /usr/gnu/share/man/man
> and the symlink in /usr/share/man/man1 - that's the
> opposite of what I've done previously.
Well, I'm certainly confused.
Let's start with why /usr/share exists.
It exists because at one time, the cost of a couple of gigabytes
of rotating rust was a significant expense (Literally, "a couple
of gigabytes", maybe less).
/usr/share could host the files for both sparc and x86 systems
offered by Sun which didn't care about the instruction set or
the byte-sex. Hence, a server could be set up with three filesystems:
/export/usr.sparc
/export/usr.x86
/export/share
with /export/share being mounted by both sparc and x86 clients.
We saved the size of having the files in /export/share in each of
the usr filesystems.
Few did this, as the cost of rotating rust dropped.
To the best of my knowledge, nobody has done this for the various
other "share" directories that have appeared in our system - /usr/sfw/share
and now /usr/gnu/share (at least nobody in their right mind).
The GNU/Linux community seems to have simply adopted Solaris's /usr/share
conventions (more or less) for no good reason I understand. (Maybe
compatibility
with Solaris?) They never supported diskless, and by the time GNU/Linux
started thinking about things like the FSH (of the LSB), rotating rust was
pretty darn cheep.
My point is that /usr/share/<something> makes some bit of sense, at
least in a historical context. /usr/<something>/share makes no sense
what so ever.
I'll assume that the "share" in /usr/gnu/share/man/man1 is only to fit some
form of "expected path". (I'd prefer to see the "share" left out of
this as I
think it provides no value and possibly a "snikering point" (Who Me? Am
I snikering?). However, that's really a minor stylistic choice.)
However, to keep the point of "share" a little bit sane, the symbolic links
should definately be in the direction that Dermot said he's made them in
the past.
In case you haven't guessed, the proliferation of "share" directories is one
of my pet peeves.
- jek3
