Re: Where Should I Install things?

From: Peter T. Breuer (ptb_at_oboe.it.uc3m.es)
Date: 09/10/03 

Date: Wed, 10 Sep 2003 17:40:52 +0200

don_pettengill@spamgilent.com wrote:
> Peter T. Breuer <ptb@oboe.it.uc3m.es> wrote:
> : There is a perfectly well defined standard that has been in operation
> : for thirty years, and everyone is perfectly happy with it. What makes
> : you unhappy?

> If only that were so :-)

It is so.

> Linux progs do indeed almost go "all over the place". You are right

They do not.

> that everyone is happy with "the standard", but you leave out that
> everone seems to have a different idea of what "the standard" is! I run

They all have the same idea. I assume you are arguing in such a jolly
fashion from a position of knowledlge, by the way.

> Red Hat and I have noticed more than once that rpm packages sometimes
> put things in different places than the source package for the same
> program (after make install). That's one of the real pains of using

Both are correct! If the distro does the install, then the files will
go in one place, but if the admin does the install (by compiling
locally) then the files will go in another! That is exactly the
standard - it's so you don't get mixed up what the distro provides and
what you provide. So when you change the distro you don'tlose your
work. Etc.

> both means to update software (sometimes I wonder if it isn't deliberate
> ...). I have Open Office under /opt at the moment; Star Office used to

That's a correct place for it.

> be somewhere else (I forget where now; it's been a while).

It could be in /usr/bin. That's also a correct place for it.

> There are some standards that are now always followed (for example,
> system config files under /etc - but note that not so very long ago,
> HP-UX for one, used /etc for system binaries like 'mount', 'ping', and

But that was not part of the standard.

> ... etc :-) ). I am not used to seeing application binaries or config
> files under /lib or /usr/lib, but some app trees blaze away there. It's

No they don't. If you are thinking of gcc and tk and tcl and other
things like that, they put their "library" data there. That is,
readonly data necessary for the running of their systems.

> really quite fuzzy what if anything should go in /opt. /var always has

/opt is currently for big second party packages that like to organize
themselves in a single dir. Open office springs to mind.

> logs and spool files, but now and again I see apps putting themselves

/var is for anything varying.

> there one way or another. Why there should be a /var/lib is beyond me,

For varying data of some permanence. A windows dir for wine is a good
example of what one could put there.

> One of the problems is the pull in different directions as to whether
> "an application" should collect in one place all it needs to run,

There is no pull. That would be a different type of organisation
altogether.

> including config files. It seems like user apps tend to follow this

There is no such thing as a "user app". I think you mean "application"
as opposed to "utility".

> model, whereas system app files are placed based on their function. If
> there were any clear boundary between the two, things would be clearer

There is a clear boundary - one of them does not exist.

> Summary: there are some standards, but they are loose at best, and
> interpreted differently by different developers. Given any particular
> application (say, "a spread***"), there is no way of knowing exactly

There is. You can read the manifest. But it will go in /usr/bin, with
config data in /etc, libraries in /usr/lib, and varying data (should
tehre be any) somewhere under /var.

> where your install package will put it, beyond certain obvious no-nos
> such as it certainly won't go in /etc/ or in /var/spool/ and so on.

Peter