Re: [wmii] Urgent .deb call for 9base

On Wed, Dec 21, 2005 at 05:04:47PM +0100, Anselm R. Garbe wrote:
> On Wed, Dec 21, 2005 at 04:51:04PM +0100, Georg Neis wrote:
>> * Anselm R. Garbe <garbeam_AT_wmii.de> wrote:
> >> On Wed, Dec 21, 2005 at 03:29:55PM +0000, Uriel wrote:
> > >> On Wed, Dec 21, 2005 at 04:24:04PM +0100, Anselm R. Garbe wrote:
> > > >> Michael Prokop has created one for grml already based on
> > > >> 9base-1-rc1. He choosed /usr/share/9/ as location.
> > >>
> > >> are you people on drugs?
> >>
> >> No, but the Debian guys having problems with /opt or /usr/lib or
> >> /usr/local.
>>
>> Any Debian developer will tell you that /usr/share certainly was the
>> wrong choice.

> The correct directory would be /usr/plan9/ or /usr/9/ - but this
> won't be accepted until 9base is not that widespread as X11R6.

> /usr/lib is maybe a better choice referring what the GNU guys
> write in hier(7), but still a bad place. From BSD POV I don't
> see the point in messing up /usr/lib with binaries, but well,
> I've seen such things in Debian.

Indeed, in Debian /usr/lib/<pkgname> is the place for packages to put
private (or in mailman's case, conflictingly-named) arch-specific data.

The reasoning is something like this:

/usr/share is wrong because stuff there is supposed to be
architecture-independant.

/usr/local is wrong because packaged things shouldn't touch it.

/opt is for things that are managed by something other than dpkg. (eg.
Oracle's own installer)

/usr/plan9/ is not so much wrong in my opinion, but outside expectations
(of Debian users, anyway). /usr/X11R6 is kinda semi-legacy, and nothing
but X.org and XFree86 is supposed to install stuff there anymore (in
favour of /usr/lib/X11 and a package's own directories. I think the goal
is to minimise the number of top-level directories under /usr.

/usr/lib/<pkgname> also came out of the Debian process of removing
binaries from /etc and non-stateful data from /var.

/usr/bin/<pkgname> or other variants to seperate private binaries from
private .so files comes up every couple of years... It rages back and
forth for a couple of days, without challenging the status quo, and
usually peters out about the time someone executes /lib/ld-linux.so and
/lib/libc6.so to demonstrate that {the line between lib and binary is
simply what's in the path, and /usr/bin is just /usr/lib that's
path-completeable. Since /usr/lib/<pkgname> is private stuff, not in the
path, then /usr/lib/ is appropriate.}

On the plus side, I'm looking forward to .debs of wmii-2.5. ^_^

-- 
-----------------------------------------------------------
Paul "TBBle" Hampson, MCSE
8th year CompSci/Asian Studies student, ANU
The Boss, Bubblesworth Pty Ltd (ABN: 51 095 284 361)
Paul.Hampson_AT_Anu.edu.au
"No survivors? Then where do the stories come from I wonder?"
-- Capt. Jack Sparrow, "Pirates of the Caribbean"
License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.1/au/
-----------------------------------------------------------