Re: [MLUG] /opt: The One True Filesystem Organization?

[Mike Miller <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

On Tue, 31 Jul 2001 EMAIL:PROTECTED wrote:

> The old and well-established solution to this problem is /opt, which
> kde and a few other utils (cdrecord etal) install to by default. I'm
> told it's also heavily utilized by other Unix vendors, notably Sun.
> Basically, /opt-installed programs maintain the same directory
> hierarchy that would exist in /usr or /usr/local, except they are
> contained in their own package directories. ie, /opt/kde/bin,
> /opt/kde/man, /opt/kde/lib, etc.

I use Solaris and I have installed packages in /opt.  They seem to have
stopped making them that way and now the generally install in /usr/local.
For me it was annoying to have things installed in /opt because every new
package would have its binaries in a new directory and my path wouldn't go
through that directory.  So then I'd have to build symbolic links in
/usr/local/bin to the executables in /opt/foo/bin.

Now I actually prefer to have a package install into /usr/local.  It puts
the binaries in /usr/local/bin, it might also create /usr/local/foo and
put more stuff in there or in some of the standard /usr/local places
(e.g., /usr/local/lib/foo).  Man pages would go in /usr/local/man, so that
my manpath catch them.  If I want to remove the package later, I use pkgrm
and remove it (cleanly as far as I can tell).

So I don't see the advantage of /opt for Solaris packages (like RPMs, I
assume).  I do see the advantage for .tar.gz installations, but you still
have to do something about path and manpath.


> - PATH environment variable. Non-issue, just add /opt/*/bin to your
> path on login or system bootup or explicit command.

I prefer to stick symbolic links in /usr/local/bin.


> - Man pages. MANPATH completely overrides man.conf, so this is
> trickier: whatever is done to MANPATH is going to completely screw
> whatever the system is already set up to use. I'm suspecting I can
> just man --path the current path and append /opt/*/man to that.

I prefer to put symbolic links in /usr/local/man/man1 (or whatever).


Thanks for sharing your idea.  I think you are right about .tar.gz
installations and I'll probably try to use /opt more for those in the
future.

Mike

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