Path structure...

[Michael Smith <miff@apanix.apana.org.au>]

>
>> The SYSV solution seems to have been promoted a few times now. Let me
>> just add that it may be worth to keep an eye how LINUX is doeing
>> things. Among other things, there will be a port to 68k machines at
>> some point, so beong compatible with that may be worth something.
>
>Excellent point! Let's join forces with the Linux 68k people here.
>Does somebody have the address for the Linux 68k mailing list?
>In general: Let's try to find out what the major UNIX's path
>structure is like. For HPUX, I can say that they are still BSD-like,
>but moving towards a V.4 structure gradually. Let's make a list!
>Quite obviously, we need some more information here.

I wouldn't get too enthused about Linux - I'm part of the porting team,
and the atari effort seems to be pretty dead.  At least part of the problem
here has been the slow work on the part of the Amiga people, and the
fact that all we have had is 'where is it' support, and very little 
help from people who have something to contribute.

>> Later we need to decide where put other stuff. Everything not covered
>> by the standard should probably go into /usr/local, but since we are

>... or /usr/contrib

>> goeing the gnu way, what about a program like gzip? And if emacs is
>> goeing to be the standard editor, should it still reside in
>> /usr/local? There are a zillion question like these.
>
>Sure, but let's first get the general structure agreed upon, or we
>will get lost in details. We can decide such questions later.

Personally, there are quite a few different ways we can go here... I'd
like to point out that there is no 'standard SysVr4 path structure', so
we're back at square 1.... however, I propose something that looks like
this :

/		: top level, home to mount points & such
/tmp		: working space
/bin		: minimal utilities (sh, ls, cat, sed etc)
/sbin		: system management utils that are needed before mounts.
/var		: growing files (logs, spool for news and mail)
/etc		: configuration files & c. (no executables, see sbin)
/usr		: top level for user tools - static. 
		  Items that live under here are considered part of the
		  'standard ' installation, ie are not site-dependant,
		  and are not commonly modified.
/usr/lib	: library items - compiler libraries, help files etc
/usr/include	: include files for compilers
/usr/bin	: non-minimal user binaries
/usr/sbin	: system management tools that are not need before mounts.
/usr/local	: head of the tree for installation of site-specific
		  items. You would expect to find .../bin, .../lib
		  etc under here.
/home		: 'home' directory(ies) - head of the tree for user-specific
		  storage

This is a scheme followed by all major unices at this point in time, with
very little variation.

I must confess I'm a little worried at the 'bugger compatability' attitude
at the moment.  Yes, I'm aware that it's a real pain in somre regards,
but there are any number of very useful tools/applications that run
under Gemdos, many of which are not suported anymore, and many more which,
while supported, are hardly likely to be updated like that - whether the
authors don't have the ability/tools or just lack of time/incentive.

-- 
# mike smith : miff@apanix.apana.org.au - Silicon grease monkey        #
# "The question 'why are the fundamental laws of nature mathematical'  #
# then invites the trivial response 'because we define as fundamental  #
# those laws which are mathematical'". Paul Davies, _The_Mind_of_God_. #