Alan Coopersmith <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Joerg Schilling wrote:
> > - The current hierarchy on Sun Solaris is just using a planless
> > aggregation of free software on various places. There is no reason
> > why GNOME related programs (that are completely useless without X
> > that could modify the PATH) made it into /usr/bin while iportant
> > programs like wget are hidden in /usr/sfw/bin/
>
> There were plans - they just kept changing. 8-)
>
> The plan for /usr/sfw/bin is changing to be mainly for things like GNU
> utilities whose names conflict with programs already in /usr/bin - those
> that don't, like wget, are likely to move in the future. There's even
> talk of no longer hiding developer tools like make in /usr/ccs/bin!
Yesterday, I had a long discussion about the best hierarchy....
Here are my complusions that did lead me to my current decision:
- Most free software is unique in functionality and name.
This software may go either to /usr/bin or to /usr/sps/*
or any other distribution specific FOSS hierarchy.
In case that a unique hierarchy name is desired, there is a
need to standardize on the way the programs are compiled.
This means e.g. GNU tar (a secondary level application because
it creates a name clash if compiled in the default way) needs
to be compiled to use the 'g' prefix and to create POSIX.1-1988
compliant archives by default on all distributions that choose
to put GNU tar on the same location. If GNU tar is compiled to create
non-standard GNU-tar archives by default, there may be no link
with the name 'tar' pointing to 'gtar'.
- The following sources of free software create a significant number
of programs that do similar things than the POSIX basic tool set
and thus create name clashes:
*BSD the oldest source of tools (starting in 1978). As the current
tools are significantly different from 4.2-BSD (/usr/ucb), it
makes sense to reserve the /usr/bsd/* hierarchy in case there
is a demand for porting recent versions of BSD tools.
Schily medium age (starting in 1982). The tools are currently in
/opt/schily/* but as they are not "optional" on SchilliX, it
seems that they belong to /usr/schily/* in future.
GNU The youngest set of tools (starting around 1986).
My current idea is to put them into /usr/sps/* as Linux
users may expect them in the same hierarchy as the rest of
free software. It may be a good idea to create a second location
(e.g. /usr/gnu/bin) with symlinks to /usr/sps/bin/<gnu-tool> to
document the origin and to allow to use PATH to set up a
specific precedence order.
Here are my current plans for SchilliX (but I am open to discussions):
- All important programs are in /usr/bin.
This is to make it easy to select a minimal subset that is granted
to be functional. bash, wget, smake all go here
- Keep /usr/sfw as it is from Solaris ON
- All programs with name clashes are put into different hierarchies
and get a prefix character (e.g. 'g' for GNU tools). There are
links to the generic name (e.t. 'tar' pointing to 'gtar') in order
to allow to select GNU default behavior by putting /usr/sps/bin or
/usr/gnu/bin before /usr/bin in the PATH.
- Put all GNU tools and all unique tools into /usr/sps/*
- Put all schily tools into /usr/schily/*
- Put all BSD tools into /usr/bsd/*
- It may make sense to have some symlinks for programs of medium
importand in /usr/bin to e.g. /usr/schily/bin to allow people
to use them without adding /usr/schily/bin/ into the PATH.
Jörg
--
EMail:[EMAIL PROTECTED] (home) Jörg Schilling D-13353 Berlin
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (uni)
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (work) Blog: http://schily.blogspot.com/
URL: http://cdrecord.berlios.de/old/private/ ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/schily
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