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

[Mikhail Kovalenko <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

Mike Miller wrote:
> 
> 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).

I have always viewed /usr/local and /opt as serving the same purpose
with a different name. So I usually make /opt a symlink to /usr/local.
The only software I've seen that used /opt was StarOffice, anyway.

-- 
Misha Kovalenko
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