Re: [Nmh-workers] --prefix=/usr/local issues

[heymanj]

On 21 March 2013 at 18:54, Bill Wohler <address@hidden>wrote:

> Lyndon Nerenberg <address@hidden> writes:
> 
>> On 2013-03-18, at 7:36 PM, address@hidden wrote:
>>
>>> I configured and compiled with --prefix /usr/local
>>> and things worked fine. Unfortunately, the whatnow
>>> prompt reports the following when I try to send:
>>>  unable to exec /usr/local/nmh/lib/post: No such file or directory
>>
>> Unrelated, but this reminds me of another nit I have with --prefix.
>>
>> Currently we install the etc stuff into ${prefix}/etc, which spams
>> /usr/local/etc pretty hard when faced with --prefix=/usr/local.
>> Personally, I'm not a fan of the /usr/local/nmh default prefix, and
>> would prefer to see it changed to /usr/local, with the configdir stuff
>> pushed down a level to $prefix/etc/nmh. (And libexec stuff in
>> $prefix/libexec/nmh, etc) I think most people expect things to install
>> this way, and just show up in their $PATH (which, presumably, already
>> has /usr/local/bin in place).
> 
> I don't like clutter in the /usr/local namespace.

I tend to agree.  I've always assumed that /usr/local namespace was
meant to mimic / with bin,lib,etc,sbin, and include - later lib64 and
share.

> If nmh is installed in the main system, we might see /etc/nmh,
> /usr/bin/mh, and /usr/lib/mh, and it should be similar in /usr/local.

much in the same way ssh is currently installed on most systems.

> However, /opt is not organized like /usr/local, so setting prefix to
> /opt might be an interesting alternative.

I second this notion.  /opt seems to be populated by companyname or
product name, so this would actually fit quite well with nmh (/opt/nmh).

One thing I've done on my system to make testing the betas and new releases
is to override --prefix with /usr/local/nmh-{VERSION} and then create a
symlink back to /usr/local/nmh - that way I never change my PATH variable
and have the older versions available if I encounter a problem.

jerry
     // Jerry Heyman               | A government that is big enough to give
    //  Amigan Forever :-)         | you everything you want, is big enough
\\ //   heymanj at acm dot org     | to take away everything you have
 \X/    http://www.hobbeshollow.com| -- Thomas Jefferson