I think it also needs to be noticed that "base system" in lunixes implies a huge a mount of stuff
On Fri, Mar 26, 2010 at 2:59 AM, Anthony Sorace <[email protected]> wrote: > Unix has two camps for approaching this problem /usr/local and /opt. > While they're almost never followed well on modern unix systems, the idea is > basically a global local overlay vs. a per-package overlay. > > The /usr/local approach takes all packages not part of the base > system and creates a "local root", a global mirror of (roughly) the root > file system. Those poor souls don't have bind to work with, so everything > ends up "knowing" to look in /bin and /usr/local/bin, /etc and > /usr/local/etc, and so on. Packages from multiple sources are all intermixed > in one /usr/local, so you've basically got the base system vs. everything > else. EBo's /sys_aps is basically a recreation of /usr/local. > > The /opt model creates per-package trees under /opt, for example > /opt/SomePackage. Within, it gets a similar looking overlay, but specific to > that package. It's then up to the user or site admin to determine which > packages get installed. Based on a similar (but much shorter) conversation > on inferno-list, a few of us are trying out this model for third-party > packages within Inferno. > > The Plan 9 approach today is either install everything in / > (/386/bin, /sys/include, &c) or in your personal home dir and bind as > needed. The later is irritating on multi-user systems, and the former can > make maintenance a lot harder. Replica's -c and -s help, but it still > requires more vigilance from the admin than it seems like it ought to. > > Personally, I've always preferred the /opt model, as it makes it > easier to tell at a glance what's installed and to work with components > individually. The (non-)overlay can get unwieldy on Unix, but our namespaces > make that much easier for us. It also give both admins and users > package-level control over what gets included. > > Like I said, I and a few others have started playing with this in > Inferno. If it works reasonably there, I intend to try something similar in > Plan 9. Anyone likes to beat me to it, I'd love to hear about your results. > -- Federico G. Benavento
