From owner-freebsd-questions Mon Apr 23 16:14:43 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from guru.mired.org (okc-65-26-235-186.mmcable.com [65.26.235.186]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with SMTP id CFD4837B424 for ; Mon, 23 Apr 2001 16:14:40 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from mwm@mired.org) Received: (qmail 77303 invoked by uid 100); 23 Apr 2001 23:14:39 -0000 From: Mike Meyer MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-ID: <15076.46943.819845.562426@guru.mired.org> Date: Mon, 23 Apr 2001 18:14:39 -0500 To: "Thomas (Matt) Barton" Cc: Subject: Re: How Is The FeeBSD OS Like and Different Than Say Redhat or Suse LINUX In-Reply-To: References: <15076.41600.510678.517464@guru.mired.org> X-Mailer: VM 6.90 under 21.1 (patch 14) "Cuyahoga Valley" 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 Thomas (Matt) Barton types: > On Mon, 23 Apr 2001, Mike Meyer wrote: > > > Actually, everything installs in /usr/local or /usr/X11R6, but only by > > default. You can change both of those defaults globally, and it works > > fairly well. Trying to change it for one package is pretty dicey. > > NetBSD choice of putting things in /usr/pkgs (or some such) instead of > > /usr/local has some advantages. > > I'm mainly happy that it just put it all in one place by default and I can > worry about more important things. It makes it convenient. > > Just out of curiosity, though, what are the advantages about NetBSD using > /usr/pkgs instead of /usr/local? This is a political issue, and comes up every once and a while. Basically, there are some people who feel that packages/ports don't fit under the traditional use of /usr/local. For instance, /usr/opt (where I put /usr/local) is on /usr and gets backed up with /usr. /usr/local is reserved for things that I don't have copies of on the FreeBSD cdroms or CVSUP server, and points at a place that get backed up on a different schedule. Moving packages to /usr/pkgs means we get them split. Those who think they shouldn't be split can just symlink /usr/local to /usr/pkgs, or vice versa, and get what they have now with one extra symlink. The reverse doesn't work. Also, moving packages to /usr/pkgs by default means ports developers have to actually *fix* all the /usr/local dependencies in the port. In general, they do a good job and most are quite prompt about fixing broken ports - especially if you provide them - but it'd be nice if that problem just didn't come up. http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/ Independent WWW/Perforce/FreeBSD/Unix consultant, email for more information. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message