Date: Mon, 11 Dec 2000 00:33:49 -0600 (CST) From: Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org> To: current@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: /usr/local abuse Message-ID: <14900.30029.845012.721276@guru.mired.org> In-Reply-To: <200012110555.WAA34071@harmony.village.org> References: <14900.19591.200496.869754@nomad.yogotech.com> <14898.33404.356173.963351@guru.mired.org> <14898.31393.228926.763711@guru.mired.org> <Pine.BSF.4.21.0012091347030.88984-100000@turtle.looksharp.net> <200012100904.CAA27546@harmony.village.org> <3A336781.94E1646@newsguy.com> <14899.41809.754369.259894@guru.mired.org> <200012101557.KAA29588@khavrinen.lcs.mit.edu> <14899.43958.622675.847234@guru.mired.org> <20001210120840.C38697@vger.bsdhome.com> <14899.47196.795281.662619@zircon.seattle.wa.us> <14899.49294.958909.82912@guru.mired.org> <14899.62738.768609.598990@nomad.yogotech.com> <14899.62189.243395.903919@nomad.yogotech.com> <14900.2598.958785.326648@guru.mired.org> <200012110555.WAA34071@harmony.village.org>
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Warner Losh <imp@village.org> types: > In message <14900.19591.200496.869754@nomad.yogotech.com> Nate Williams writes: > : I know that as recent as 3=4 years ago, Purify installed itself by > : default in /usr/local, on SunOS and Solaris. Lucid did this as well, > : although things start getting pretty fuzzy going back that far. :) > purify and the binary distributions of xemacs installed themselves > into /usr/local on Solaris in the 1992-1996 time frame. As did *ALL* > of the software binaries we downloaded from the net. Framemaker > installed in /usr/local as well in the SunOS 3.5/4.0 time frame. > Interleaf installed itself in /usr/local on SunOS 4.0/4.1 time frame. How much of that software did you get from the OS vendor? > : > My claims about "history" and "tradition" are attempts to refute > : > Brandon's assertion that packages going into /usr/local has "years of > : > tradition behind it." Mostly, it's about what *packages* are, not what > : > /usr/local was used for. > : I disagree. > I do too. Exactly what do you disagree with? That I'm arguing about what packages are? Or my assertion that packages installing in /usr/local doesn't have years of tradition behind it? The former is clearly true. And I've never tried to claim that people haven't been installing third party software in /usr/local for years (though some interpreted my comments about "locally maintained software" to exclude such). My claim is that the package system has grown into something other than "something to make installing third party software more convenient". It is pretty much a direct translation of some vendors practice of providing precompiled freeware into an OSS environment. The end user no longer has to worry about porting to or configuring for the OS - someone appointed by the OS vendor does that. The end user doesn't worry about updates to the software - the vendor provides them with udpates to the OS. The end user doesn't have to worry about what is and isn't part of the software - tools for doing all that come with the OS (well, with FreeBSD, anyway, if not with all the commercial OSs). Sure, with FreeBSD the end user sometimes has to *compile* the package. On the other hand, the end user sometimes has to compile the OS as well; that's part of dealing with an OSS system. Now, back to /usr/local and tradition - how many OS vendors provide software that installs in /usr/local. So far, no one has named one other than FreeBSD and OpenBSD, which copied FreeBSD. All the ones you named aren't OS vendors, they are third parties distributing their own software. Those are perfectly reasonable things to install in /usr/local; the OS vendor has nothing to do with them. That's not true for FreeBSD packages. <mike To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message
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