Software installation opinions needed
Chris Torek
chris at mimsy.umd.edu
Fri Sep 21 09:45:28 AEST 1990
In article <1990Sep19.144819.12179 at dg-rtp.dg.com>
hackwort at dg-rtp.dg.com (Brian Hackworth) writes:
>We can divide third party packages into two parts:
(Actually, this applies to all the software, not just third party stuff.)
>the part which is the same for all hosts, and is therefore
>shared (an example is the /usr/bin/cat executable); and
>the part which is unique to each host (an example is /etc/passwd).
(Some might quibble with this particular /etc file; a better example
might be /etc/fstab or /etc/exports or /etc/ttys.)
I would break this even further: the part that is the same for all
hosts *regardless of architecture*; the part that is the same for
all hosts of the same architecture; and the part that is always unique.
This matches /etc vs /usr/bin vs /usr/share in 4.3BSD-reno.
(Even this is still not always right, as the sharable machine independent
files in /usr/share may vary depending on the vendor's release version
even though they are the same across architectures. This is rare enough
not to worry too much about it.)
> /etc - for host-specific data and configuration files
> /usr/bin - for user-visisble executable commands
> /usr/etc - for host-independent data and configuration files
(4.3BSD-reno puts the lattermost in /usr/share.)
> /usr/lib - for library data and routines
4.3BSD-reno has /usr/lib, /usr/libdata, and /usr/libexec: /usr/lib holds
only libraries, /usr/libdata holds only data files, and /usr/libexec holds
only executables. All of these are independent of the particular host
but not of the architecture.
> /usr/catman - for manual pages
These are in /usr/share/man/cat*/* in 4.3BSD-reno.
> /usr/sbin - for system (administrative) commands not
> visible to ordinary users
(One needs a /sbin as well, for fsck, etc.)
>Note that this convention puts all executables in "bin" and "sbin",
>even though most unixes today have executables in etc and lib
>as well.
In 4.3BSD-reno, /etc binaries move to /sbin and /usr/lib binaries move
to /usr/libexec.
--
In-Real-Life: Chris Torek, Univ of MD Comp Sci Dept (+1 301 405 2750)
Domain: chris at cs.umd.edu Path: uunet!mimsy!chris
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