Software installation opinions needed

[Chris Torek]

In article <1990Sep19.144819.12179 at dg-rtp.dg.com>
hackwort at dg-rtp.dg.com (Brian Hackworth) writes:
>We can divide third party packages into two parts:

(Actually, this applies to all the software, not just third party stuff.)

>the part which is the same for all hosts, and is therefore
>shared (an example is the /usr/bin/cat executable); and 
>the part which is unique to each host (an example is /etc/passwd).

(Some might quibble with this particular /etc file; a better example
might be /etc/fstab or /etc/exports or /etc/ttys.)

I would break this even further: the part that is the same for all
hosts *regardless of architecture*; the part that is the same for
all hosts of the same architecture; and the part that is always unique.

This matches /etc vs /usr/bin vs /usr/share in 4.3BSD-reno.

(Even this is still not always right, as the sharable machine independent
files in /usr/share may vary depending on the vendor's release version
even though they are the same across architectures.  This is rare enough
not to worry too much about it.)

>    /etc		- for host-specific data and configuration files
>    /usr/bin		- for user-visisble executable commands
>    /usr/etc		- for host-independent data and configuration files

(4.3BSD-reno puts the lattermost in /usr/share.)

>    /usr/lib		- for library data and routines

4.3BSD-reno has /usr/lib, /usr/libdata, and /usr/libexec: /usr/lib holds
only libraries, /usr/libdata holds only data files, and /usr/libexec holds
only executables.  All of these are independent of the particular host
but not of the architecture.

>    /usr/catman	- for manual pages

These are in /usr/share/man/cat*/* in 4.3BSD-reno.

>    /usr/sbin	- for system (administrative) commands not
>		    visible to ordinary users

(One needs a /sbin as well, for fsck, etc.)

>Note that this convention puts all executables in "bin" and "sbin",
>even though most unixes today have executables in etc and lib
>as well.

In 4.3BSD-reno, /etc binaries move to /sbin and /usr/lib binaries move
to /usr/libexec.
-- 
In-Real-Life: Chris Torek, Univ of MD Comp Sci Dept (+1 301 405 2750)
Domain:	chris at cs.umd.edu	Path:	uunet!mimsy!chris