Re: [bincimap] rpm paths....

[Dan Mills]

Hi,

On Sunday, February 9, 2003, at 07:37  PM, Caskey Dickson wrote:

Having do dig around in /opt/<package> and
figure out which of /opt/<package>/conf or /opt/<package>/etc or even the awful
/opt/<package>/control is the right place to manage something such is confusing
and a waste of the precious little time I have for administration tasks.

The FHS explicitly states that the correct location for configuration files for packages installed in /opt/<package>/ is /etc/opt/<package>/. See sections 3.7.4 and 3.12.2 of the FHS.

Binc doesn't comply with this, and it probably should.

The FHS is a standard, it's acquired huge amounts of support plus eased
many of the administration headaches that have nothing to do with actually
getting something to work.

/opt is in the FHS. If you think /opt is a bad idea, that's fine, but /opt is still in the FHS. You can't claim software doesn't comply with the FHS just because it doesn't follow the particular subset of the FHS that you prefer.

It shouldn't be necessary to use locate and find
to configure a package,

'rpm -ql bincimap', or
'dpkg -L bincimap', or
'swlist Bincimap'

You get the idea. You don't need locate or find, even if the package doesn't follow the FHS. And if it does, then it's simple. /etc/opt/<package> for packages in /opt, /etc for packages in /usr, and /usr/local/etc for packages in /usr/local.

/opt is a historical throwback
that should be marked as a deprecated but documented part of the FHS.
/usr/local does everything /opt does, but better.

But it's not deprecated now (and I doubt that it will be, but that's another matter). Also, as Andy said, there is a different focus for each hierarchy. This is what the FHS says about the purpose of /opt and /usr/local:

FHS section 3.12.1:
"/opt is reserved for the installation of add-on application software packages."

FHS section 4.9.1:
"The /usr/local hierarchy is for use by the system administrator when installing software locally."

-Dan