Re: /usr/local removed... but entries for it exist yet!

From: Igor Sobrado (igor_at_no-spam.on.the.net)
Date: 12/16/04

  • Next message: Thor Lancelot Simon: "Re: /usr/local removed... but entries for it exist yet!" 
    Date: 16 Dec 2004 11:23:03 +0100

    Martin Neitzel <neitzel@marshlabs.gaertner.de> wrote:
    > I beg to differ in one respect: People *do* still write software now.
    > (Where do you think NetBSD comes from?)

    Indeed, people writes software now. But most of them are working for
    corporations or big projects (e.g., developing for the NetBSD Foundation).
    Most system managers do not write their own software packages.

    But I fully agree with you:

    > Many of those who seriously work on substantial changes often prefer
    > a strict separation between an /usr/pkg reflecting an official release
    > and /usr/local containing whatever they add or modify.
    >
    > And, as has already been noted, /usr/local now provides(!) the oft
    > required space which is *safe* from (a) base system mods and (b)
    > pkg developers. That is, outside people are not supposed to muck
    > with this _local_ space. It's strictly reserved for the local admins.

    You are absolutely right here. Sometimes people wants that software
    in a different place. I do the same because I do not want to build
    new binaries each time I upgrade NetBSD (installing new binaries
    from the pkgsrc framework is highly recommendable, but software that
    is customized and does not upgrade usually can be safely shared
    between OS releases). I use /usr/contrib instead because it was
    the place where that software was provided in earlier BSD releases
    and is available now in operating systems as HP-UX. It is customized
    general purpose software.

    I prefer other software packages in $HOME/bin instead (e.g., I am
    running some scripts to provide the right authentication parameters
    to different wireless networks here, and I have just dropped a
    shell script that chosed the whois server to ask for information,
    new whois(1) utility works really fine and there is no need for
    that script now). I have software for backing up important data
    and removing old email after a certain amount of time -provided as
    an argument to the script- too. All that software cannot be
    in /usr/{pkg,ports}.

    You are right about people preferring a different place for customized
    software, of course. The point that was it was not *required* for
    standard software packages customized using the tools provided by
    pkgsrc/ports. But it is sometimes a desiderable feature.

    I agree about not dropping /usr/local, but I found a bit annoying
    those /usr/local related entries in man.conf and the initialization
    shell scripts. That is the reason I asked for changing it, I supposed
    it should not be here.

    OTOH, I do not agree about the empty "html??" entries in /usr/share/man. ;-)
    Those entries seems odd to me. I do not think that HTML versions of man
    pages are a good idea (except as a reference in http://www.NetBSD.org/,
    looking for man pages of different NetBSD releases is very useful).

    Best regards,

    Igor.

  • Next message: Thor Lancelot Simon: "Re: /usr/local removed... but entries for it exist yet!"