From owner-freebsd-questions Tue Aug 8 15:36:24 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from guru.mired.org (zoom0-168.telepath.com [216.14.0.168]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 8A2E537B7F6 for ; Tue, 8 Aug 2000 15:36:18 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from mwm@mired.org) Received: (qmail 19656 invoked by uid 100); 8 Aug 2000 22:35:40 -0000 From: Mike Meyer MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-ID: <14736.35644.722553.20716@guru.mired.org> Date: Tue, 8 Aug 2000 17:35:40 -0500 (CDT) To: questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: unix filesystem structure In-Reply-To: References: X-Mailer: VM 6.72 under 21.1 (patch 10) "Capitol Reef" XEmacs Lucid X-face: "5Mnwy%?j>IIV\)A=):rjWL~NB2aH[}Yq8Z=u~vJ`"(,&SiLvbbz2W`;h9L,Yg`+vb1>RG% *h+%X^n0EZd>TM8_IB;a8F?(Fb"lw'IgCoyM.[Lg#r\ Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG > From: Konrad Heuer > On Tue, 8 Aug 2000, Jonathan Fosburgh wrote: > Yes, I do agree. Keeping all parts of an application together may be > useful for MS Windows (e.g.) where programs are called by a kind of > symbolic links fixed in the start menu structure but doesn't seem to > practical for a command-line approach where you don't want the path to > grow beyond limits. Actually, you have all the parts to do this in a LUI environment like a Unix shell. You symlink the commands into a central repository that goes on the path. That's really the only sane way to deal with systems that package additions into their own directory structure for shell use. For an IUI, with everything showing up in pictures on the desktop, the desktop provides that central repository. Also, the comment about the "keep an application together" approach being "more modern" is wrong. That's how many packages worked under v7, BSD 4.x and similar era Eunices. They all replicated the structure of the flavor of the Unix they came from in their own, or assumed a top-level directory with that structure. The current aproach - especially with the addition of sbin, libexec & libdata - is the more recent development.