Re: [forward] FHS pre-2.1 draft #3 on web site

[Philip Hands <phil@hands.com>]

Andreas Voegele <andreas.voegele@nikocity.de> writes:

>     >> In my opinion, the installation guide should suggest creating
>     >> an /opt partition if the user intends to install commercial
>     >> software like Applixware, Civilization or the Oracle RDBMS, but
>     >> nothing else should be done.
> 
>     > What problem is solved by not providing the skeleton
>     > directories?
> 
> You suggest creating the following directories by default:
> 
> /etc/opt, /opt/bin, /opt/doc, /opt/include, /opt/info, /opt/lib,
> /opt/man and /var/opt.
> 
> Firstly, none of the existing applications that go to /opt use these
> directories.  For example, the version of Applixware that SuSE ships
> goes to /opt/applix and is started with /usr/bin/X11/applixware.
> There's neither a need for the directories you suggest nor for
> symbolic links in /opt/bin.

Well, that's a bug, since they have no right to install things into
/usr/bin/X11, but should instead suggest to the admin that they do
something like this:

  ln -s /opt/applix/bin/applixware /usr/local/bin

possibly by making it an optional action at the and of the install
script, with a ``Do you want me to do this?'' prompt.

Other than that, I agree with you wholeheartedly.

Cheers, Phil.