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From: "Albert D. Cahalan" <acahalan@cs.uml.edu>
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Subject: Re: How Is The FeeBSD OS Like and Different Than Say Redhat or Suse LINUX
To: ajh3@chmod.ath.cx (Andrew Hesford)
Date: Wed, 25 Apr 2001 05:35:40 -0400 (EDT)
Cc: acahalan@cs.uml.edu (Albert D. Cahalan), matt@fear.net,
	freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG
In-Reply-To: <20010424022830.A6085@cec.wustl.edu> from "Andrew Hesford" at Apr 24, 2001 02:28:30 AM
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Andrew Hesford writes:
> On Tue, Apr 24, 2001 at 01:33:54AM -0400, Albert D. Cahalan wrote:

>> Every FHS-compliant Linux distribution reserves /usr/local
>> for _you_ to use. It is for _local_ stuff only.
>>
>> Doesn't this make sense? If you compile a home-grown or self-ported
>> app for FreeBSD, where would you put it? I hope you don't dump it
>> in /usr/local with all the stuff provided by FreeBSD! It looks like
>> you need a /usr/local/local or /usr/local_I_REALLY_MEAN_IT for this.
...
> now, forced by foolishness into a lesson of what "site-specific" means,
> here we go:

[snip]

This is the first time I have ever seen a reasonably coherent
justification for dumping the ports stuff into /usr/local.
Thank you very much.

It's still a mess though.

> 2) Everything in the ports tree (and the packages that represent ports)
> qualifies as site-specific by any stretch of the imagination.
> 3) The Linux Filesystem Standard makes no provsion for self-compiled
> software.
> 
> NOTE: FHS 2.1 states that /usr/local "is for use by the system
> administrator when installing software locally." This does NOT mean
> locally compiled (or else they would have said "compiled"), but instead
> has the same meaning as site-specific.

site-specific: something only your site has

> /usr/local must be protected from
> overwriting when the system software is updated. For FreeBSD, this is
> then everything not found in /usr/src, since /usr/src is the source for
> the "system software", and is the only software updated during a system
> update (make world).

That is not a complete upgrade.

> Hence the FreeBSD organization is logical even by
> this consideration alone. It is equally logical for linux distributions
> to store everything in /usr, then, because nobody has any idea where the
> linux "system" ends and local software begins. 

The system is what comes on your CD-ROM.

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