On Wednesday, October 15, 2003, at 08:15 AM, Jeremy C. Reed wrote:

> On Wed, 15 Oct 2003, Chris Gehlker wrote:
>
>> 1)	A place for programs that Apple manages. Software Update will
>> happily stomp all over this.
>> 2)	Another place for stuff you compile yourself.
>> 3)	A third place were apt-get puts programs
>
> Is the Debian build process good enough to allow changing the prefix of
> where things are installed (including documentation)?
>
> Not all software understands the ./configure --prefix, so sometimes
> patches are needed to make sure hard-coded paths are fixed.

Apt-get is not that smart. The Fink Project folks who ported the Debian 
tools wisely decided to put everything in a separate tree.
>
>> 4)	Yet another place where ordinary users are encouraged to install
>> programs by drag-and-drop.
>> 5)	Some overlap between 1 and 4
>
> Also, what about configuration directories?
>
> Can you have seperate /etc, /usr/pkg/etc, /usr/local/etc (however they 
> are
> named) configuration directories and choose to consolidate if needed?
>
> With pkgsrc, configurations files are defined. By default they install 
> to
> an examples directory and if don't exist are copied to the real
> configuration directory. (Copying into place can be turned off too.) 
> If it
> is not copied into place, because a file already exists, then it will 
> tell
> you. Also, on deinstall the two files are compared and if different 
> then
> the real (or edited) config file is not removed. The final location for
> configurations can be defined pkgsrc-wide -- like you can choose to 
> have
> all configurations installed to /home/joe/etc. The important key is 
> that
> all the software that is built is trained to know that /home/joe/etc/.
>
> Some admins run pkgsrc on FreeBSD boxes and so they do have three 
> complete
> software environments (The core FreeBSD, /usr/local for ports, and
> /usr/pkg for pkgsrc installations).
>
> Also, I use pkgsrc on some machines as a regular (non-root) user. So I 
> can
> have a fourth location for software installations (like 
> /home/reed/pkg/).

IFAICT pkgsrc works exactly the same on every supported platform. 
That's quite a few platforms. I simply forgot it when I was enumerating 
Mac install locations.
>
>> Now that can make your head ache at first but you soon learn that with
>> a few symlinks and some judicious manipulation of your PATH you get
>> very fine control. You can change the personality of your machine just
>> by swapping .zshrc files.
>>
>> Now my ideal Linux setup would follow the original Unix model and only
>> put programs absolutely essential to operation of the machine in 
>> places
>> like /bin or /sbin. Everything else would go under /usr/local/compiled
>> or /usr/local/apt-gotten depending.
>>
>> Actual Linux is not that far from the ideal.

Oops! I should have said 'Linux actually"