On Sun, Feb 17, 2008 at 12:41:46PM -0500, William Boshuck wrote: > > Yes, there's no point in making silly changes. > > Case in point: Suggesting that the ports and > packages infrastructure be modified
I'm not sure (not being OpenBSD developer), that one has to use such Very Important Terms like "the ports and packages infrastructure"... it seems, that perhaps (I may be wrong) it could take just to change default value for LOCALBASE in mk.conf. OK, not quite sure at this moment. As I can see (correct me, if I'm wrong), perhaps I can change it on my own, if I won't use "binary" packages, just relying on ported sources, right? > to install > third party software other than where the > developers seem to want it so go (aka /usr/local), > whereas the existing conventions introduce no > problems whatsoever for any user with a clue. Searching the net, I've found an old thread, where the others expressed the advantages of such solution: http://www.bsdforums.org/forums/archive/index.php/t-12003.html #v+ For example, NetBSD has its own lpr lpq lprm commands to do with its "lpd". CUPS (the Common Unix Printing System) has a set of commands called lpr lpq lprm, and they are NOT the same as the BSD ones. What if you needed both? If you installed it into the main area, it would overwrite the NetBSD ones - that wouldn't be what you wanted!!! It's a GREAT way to keep your BSD system clean from the additional packages you may wish to run. ALSO, it makes system upgrades cleaner too! It would prevent the reverse of the pre-mentioned example - where an upgrade would overwrite the CUPS commands with the BSD ones - again, not what you would want! [..] The reasoning follows along the lines of: keep the OS separate from admin-installed apps. This means that the base OS goes under one directory tree, and everything else goes under a separate directory tree. NetBSD went one further and separated user-installed (source compiled) apps from the system-managed (pkgsrc / packages) apps. Why? Because doing a manual install of AppX into /usr/local prevents you from shooting yourself in the foot when you test out AppX2 via pkgsrc. Things don't get overwritten accidentally. Things in /usr/pkg are managed by the system package management tools, things in /usr/local are managed (or not) by you. #v- ...and I agree with the above. OK, no flamewar - that'll be all from my side - I can live with current setting. But it doesn't mean, that I'm unable to see, that it _can_ be solved a little bit better. -- pozdrawiam / regards Zbigniew Baniewski
