Re: differences between /bin, /usr/bin and /usr/local/bin

From: Mohun Biswas (m.biswas_at_cleartool.com)
Date: 09/17/03 

Date: Wed, 17 Sep 2003 16:55:31 GMT

Andreas Kahari wrote:
> The thing I said about FreeBSD having dynamic binaries in /bin
> was a conclusion I got after reading a recent Slashdot story at
> "http://bsd.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/08/18/1517248".

I think you didn't read far enough. The gist of what I read is that in
all *existing* versions FreeBSD ships only static binaries in /bin. For
the *upcoming* release an _option_ has been added allowing you to
rebuild /bin in dynamic mode. This is said to be driven by the need of
some embedded FreeBSD uses to get really small. In the responses to the
article you cite there's a lot of misunderstanding, people thinking the
default is going to change rather than just an option added.

Interestingly, the BSD traditionalists in that thread [*] are
complaining about even the possibility of a dynamically-linked /bin
while other Unices are moving in the opposite direction. For instance
Sun has announced that there will be no static system libraries at all
in the upcoming Solaris 10, and thus no possibility of a fully static
binary (though static binaries built on older versions will presumably
continue to work, and there's no reason you can't link statically with
non-system libraries).

[*] Does anyone else remember when the two camps were SysV and BSD, and
the SysV-ers were the traditionalists and BSD-ers were the irreverent
young whippersnappers? Funny how they've morphed into the keepers of the
flame while penguinistas fill their old role.

MB

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