[fhs-discuss] on the /*/local/ hierarchies

[Jan Hauke Rahm]

On Wed, May 18, 2011 at 05:42:59PM +0000, Christoph Anton Mitterer wrote:
> On Wed, 18 May 2011 13:07:30 +0200, Jan Hauke Rahm <jhr at debian.org> wrote:
> > Hi,
> > Since symlinking /usr to / is being discussed here anyways, I'd not
> > focus on that. There is merit for some people to have /usr, others don't
> > like it anymore. If distributions started to care about that symlink,
> > users could decide and get /local easily.
> btw: I personally wouldn't like to drop /usr...
> Especially the separation between /bin|/sbin and /usr/bin|/usr/sbin is
> quite reasonable and important IMHO, espcially with respect to technicall
> issues of the boot process. It can even be security relvant IMHO.

A bit off-topic now but still...
Well, having /run is an interesting step towards / being possible to be
mounted read-only. If that's there, I don't see much merit in /usr
anymore. But I'm with Steve on this one. Let's keep it for those who
like it and simple try to make it possible to be symlinked to /.

> > No, leave /opt as free as possible. It's for all those who can't learn
> > to comply to anything, otherwise they would install to
> > $prefix/{share,bin,...}, $prefix defaulting to /usr/local and being
> > overriden by package managers to /usr. Since they can't seem to do that,
> > they have to deal with the mess they cause in /opt.
> Yes,... you're right,.. so let me express it better what I've had in my
> mind's back:
> I'd like to see /opt/local "reserved for future use/definition"....
> IF we decide in the future, that /opt/ needs a "local" as /etc, /var, /usr
> ("more or less all others") have... than we know for sure that it wasn't
> "validly" used.

The reason why I think this is unneccessary (is it really that many
double consonants?) is: /opt is to be left untouched by distributions
anyways, it's to be used only by those who don't care for your file
hierarchy.

If that's its meaning, it's in a way 'local' in the first place. If
no-one else, except the admin of the system, may write to /opt (or let
sh*tty installation processes write there), there's no sense in having a
'local' dir below that. Everything already is 'local', it just has a
different name (opt) to not be confused with (/usr)/local.

I wouldn't strongly object to /opt/local but it's probably unused and I
really don't see what should be saved there at all.

Hauke

-- 
 .''`.   Jan Hauke Rahm <jhr at debian.org>               www.jhr-online.de
: :'  :  Debian Developer                                 www.debian.org
`. `'`   Member of the Linux Foundation                    www.linux.com
  `-     Fellow of the Free Software Foundation Europe      www.fsfe.org
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