[fhs-discuss] on the /*/local/ hierarchies

[Jan Hauke Rahm]

Hi,

from the mails on this thread and my own oppinion:

On Sat, May 14, 2011 at 10:52:23PM +0000, Christoph Anton Mitterer wrote:
> 1) One idea that could be discussed (although it's very unlikely that this
> is accepted) is, whether all of the current "/*/local*" directories are
> moved to it's own hierarchy below "/local".
> So on would have e.g.:
> /local/bin
> /local/sbin
> /local/usr
> /local/etc
> /local/var
> (and their typical sub-hierarchies).

Since symlinking /usr to / is being discussed here anyways, I'd not
focus on that. There is merit for some people to have /usr, others don't
like it anymore. If distributions started to care about that symlink,
users could decide and get /local easily.

{/usr,}/local/etc is a bit more complicated, see below.

> 2) The current "definition" of the "/*/local" hierarchies is quite strange
> (IMHO):
> "The /usr/local hierarchy is for use by the system administrator when
> installing software locally."
> 
> "locally" can have many meanings: "local on disk", "on a locally exported
> network filesystem", etc. etc.
> 
> Quite often it is simply used like this:
> - any manually installed software goes to the /*/local/ hierarchies.
> - any software that is package managed does not.
> 
> I'd like to see it defined this way.

I like very much the approach of having below /usr/local everything that
is 3rd-party (not delivered by a package manager) and complies to unix
standards, e.g. make && make install stuff. /opt on the other hand can
be everything 3rd-party-like that doesn't comply, e.g. binary-only stuff
etc. That separation even makes sense backup-wise.

> 3) May I suggest to add "/etc/local".
> 
> This should be analogous to the already specified directories:
> /usr/local/*
> /var/local
> which are intended to contain any locally installed software (which is
> typically software that is not part of package management).
> 
> "/etc/local" would contain the system wide configuration of any locally
> installed software.

Yes, please. /usr/local/etc is complete nonsense imo. Config files are
not to be below /usr which is supposedly read-only. Also, considering
/var/local (and not /usr/local/var), /etc/local makes a lot of sense to
me. An admin could still decide to not follow that idea and symlink
/etc/local to /etc if he doesn't care for that separation.

> 4) "/opt/local" would be not directly related to the other directories
> mentioned above.
> The usage of "/opt" itself is rather fuzzy, and most distributions do to
> not install any software/packages there at all.
> One could argue, that anything that goes to "/opt" is somewhat local
> anyway,... but it's not necessarily not-packaged.
> 
> So I'd at least reserve the usage of "/opt/local" for "local usage".

No, leave /opt as free as possible. It's for all those who can't learn
to comply to anything, otherwise they would install to
$prefix/{share,bin,...}, $prefix defaulting to /usr/local and being
overriden by package managers to /usr. Since they can't seem to do that,
they have to deal with the mess they cause in /opt.

Hauke

-- 
 .''`.   Jan Hauke Rahm <jhr at debian.org>               www.jhr-online.de
: :'  :  Debian Developer                                 www.debian.org
`. `'`   Member of the Linux Foundation                    www.linux.com
  `-     Fellow of the Free Software Foundation Europe      www.fsfe.org
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