Re: Idea : common dir and tree (Rep:Re: Why not create packages?)

[Gary Lawrence Murphy <garym@canada.com>]

>>>>> "g" == guylhemlistes  <guylhemlistes@ifrance.com> writes:

    >> Perhaps LDP should specify a distribution-neutral location for
    >> all the HOWTOs, such as /opt/doc

    g> Basically, for a unified documentation browser/search engine,
    g> we need a standard.
    g> My idea would be putting the following hierarchy in a dir, for
    g> ex /opt/doc :

At risk of igniting a religious war ;) I'd like to point out that /opt
has a specific meaning to _most_ (not all) distros.  /opt is for
"options" and has grown to mean "Software added from non-distro
sources after the distro is installed" In the early days, FSF would
install GCC under /opt to distinguish it is something _not_ on the
Solaris tapes.

Thus, documents have several logical locations depending on how you
get them and who installs them.  Personally, I like the traditional
Unix hierarchy:

        /usr/doc        - documents from the distro CD which are
                          intrinsic to the distro. I want only the
                          distro-installed RPM readme's &c in here
                          This lets me wipe the directory clean
                          prior to system upgrades to avoid collecting
                          cruft.

        /opt/doc        - documents the sysadmin gets with packages
                          installed _after_ the distro is installed
                          for example, if I grab ViaVoice from IBM,
                          I'd want it to install under /opt/viavoice
                          but put its user docs under /opt/doc; this
                          lets me easily put /opt/doc on the intranet

        /usr/local/doc  - We've lost this over the past 10 years, but
                          in the good old days, sysadmins made 
                          /usr/local group writable to all staff; if
                          you found some nifty piece of software and
                          thought others in the org might like it,
                          you didn't need permission, you just installed
                          it under /usr/local --- today, /usr/local
                          has the same meaning as /opt, but many
                          tarballs (and configure scripts) still choose
                          this as the default ... it has almost come
                          to mean /usr/dangerous and the equating of
                          "local" with "suspect and volatile" may have
                          deep etimological significance.

Thus, if RedHat or Corel bundle KDE, its docs are under /usr/doc but
if you fetch KDE from kde.org, the docs go under /opt

Many people, primarily young people ;), have lobbied for merging these
heirarchies, and all have been defeated by the very valid requirements
of system administrators on large systems.  For your personal Linux
box, you may do what you like, but the executive summary of all of this
is that the current schemes exist for good reasons and any new scheme
(as with any area of life) must consider the _whole_ ecology.

-- 
Gary Lawrence Murphy <garym@linux.ca>: office voice/fax: 01 519 4222723
TCI - Business Innovations through Open Source : http://www.teledyn.com
Love Linux?  We need authors/reviewers - http://www.teledyn.com/authors



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