I think what you describe for /etc/local belongs under /usr/local/etc. I would 
define /usr/local like you for software not managed by the package manager but 
built by the administrator, and /opt for software not managed by the package 
manager and not built by the administrator (e.g. dropbox, nomachine, vmware 
*.deb's packaged by third party vendors).

For local machine configuration that diverges from the package manager's 
defaults, do we want to define a best practice? One idea is to leave /etc in 
pristine form as the package manager leaves it and to use symlinks from 
/usr/etc or /usr/local/etc.

Also, I thought the "shared" part of the definition for /usr/share refers to 
shared among multiple users of the local machine. The prior discussion about 
this seemed to assume it means exported as a network filesystem. Can we get 
more clarity about this?

Cheers,
Todd Schulman 

On May 14, 2011, at 6:52 PM, Christoph Anton Mittere <[email protected]> 
wrote:

> Hi.
> 
> 
> 1) One idea that could be discussed (although it's very unlikely that this
> is accepted) is, whether all of the current "/*/local*" directories are
> moved to it's own hierarchy below "/local".
> So on would have e.g.:
> /local/bin
> /local/sbin
> /local/usr
> /local/etc
> /local/var
> (and their typical sub-hierarchies).
> 
> I'm not claiming that this is necessarily better that the current schema,
> especially when one wants to mount some of them read-only, or e.g. keep all
> var-data in one filesystem.
> But it would have the advantage, that all local stuff is clearly sorted in
> its own hierarchy.
> 
> Of course I know, that this is probably difficult to get accepted.
> 
> 
> 2) The current "definition" of the "/*/local" hierarchies is quite strange
> (IMHO):
> "The /usr/local hierarchy is for use by the system administrator when
> installing software locally."
> 
> "locally" can have many meanings: "local on disk", "on a locally exported
> network filesystem", etc. etc.
> 
> Quite often it is simply used like this:
> - any manually installed software goes to the /*/local/ hierarchies.
> - any software that is package managed does not.
> 
> I'd like to see it defined this way.
> 
> 
> 3) May I suggest to add "/etc/local".
> 
> This should be analogous to the already specified directories:
> /usr/local/*
> /var/local
> which are intended to contain any locally installed software (which is
> typically software that is not part of package management).
> 
> "/etc/local" would contain the system wide configuration of any locally
> installed software.
> 
> 
> 4) "/opt/local" would be not directly related to the other directories
> mentioned above.
> The usage of "/opt" itself is rather fuzzy, and most distributions do to
> not install any software/packages there at all.
> One could argue, that anything that goes to "/opt" is somewhat local
> anyway,... but it's not necessarily not-packaged.
> 
> So I'd at least reserve the usage of "/opt/local" for "local usage".
> 
> 
> 
> Cheers,
> Chris.
> _______________________________________________
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