Subject: Re: /usr/local (again)

From: [email-masked] (Bruce Perens)
Date: Mon, 2 Sep 96 21:13 PDT

> At installation time ask the installer where the local directory is
> located and make create a link /etc/local/<package> to the location
> given by the installing person.

Let's please not add unnecessary questions in the postinst.
I think /usr/local should be a symbolic link to /local, but it should
always exist.

	Thanks

	Bruce

---

From: Dominik Kubla <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 03 Sep 1996 11:20:53 +0200

Dear Bruce,

> I think /usr/local should be a symbolic link to /local, but it should

We will not gain anything with this! I am sure if you think about it
you will recognize that this will just shift the problem to a different
location in the file system.

On all my Linux systems /usr/local is a mount point of a READ-ONLY AFS or
NFS volume. And we have our own site-wide /usr/local structure which is
shared by all 12 architectures.  As it stands right now, Debian is not 
well-behaved in a heterogenous environment.

Please take a short time to consider the arguments of others and credit
them with some intelligence and experience.  My proposal resulted from
several years of experience fitting Linux systems into an existing network.

The bottom line is: no package shall ever make any assumption about anything
regarding /usr/local.  If that package needs a COMPILE TIME definition
where local files reside, my proposal is a reasonable way to avoid hacking
the sources.

Dominik
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