John Plocher wrote: > > The distributed world at Sun seems to be able to depend on /usr/dist > (an NFS > filesystem that has 20Gb of shared executables) while at the same time > allowing > individual servers/workstations the ability to override the bits they > provide. > Interesting you bring up the Sun internal situation.
I know from experience that most users in the know avoid /usr/dist if they can help it. It's OSS tends to be more out of date than Solaris. However, /pkg is a different story. While it many not be used by the majority of Sun, I would expect that /pkg is used by a very vocal minority. Can you imagine the feedback you'll get inside of sun when people are forced to move /pkg/gnu/bin in front of /usr/bin in order to continue to get the latest versions of the GNU tools from /pkg (which when I used it was maintained very well and almost always up to date.) Here's another argument. We know that for the base UNIX tools, people are supposed to pick from /usr/bin, /usr/ucb, /usr/xpg4, etc. to select their choice of environment. I think this mechanism is something that most want to keep. If, in order to get newer versions of the GNU tools than solaris has, I'm forced to put my GNU path ahead of /usr/bin (whether mine is local or not) then you've forced me to either: 1) Use the GNU environment - since the conflicitng tools installed in my GNU directory will override the Solaris ones in /usr/bin. (Won't be as big a problem if I use /usr/ucb, or one of the others.) 2) Split out the conflicting GNU tools from my 1 GNU directory, into 2 GNU directories, and maintain and update that as things are moved into /usr/bin on Solaris. Neither of those sound that good to me either. -Kyle > Another goal here is what Roy said: > > > As a developer, I really don't care where these tools are provided > > as long as it is possible to find them on the path and, once found, > > the tools are exactly as distributed by the tool author. > > Sun's Marketing doesn't really care about the technical issues around > /usr/bin and /usr/gnu; they are more interested in the default user > experience. The OSS bits need to be delivered by default and work by > default. In their mind, a new user on Solaris *should* be able to log > in, download a project off of Sourceforge, type ./configure; make; > make install, and have it all just work. > > -John > > > >
