Kip Warner wrote:
> Speaking of which, most of my stuff installs to /usr when I use
> packages, but /usr/local when I use install targets for make. Why is
> that? What is the difference between local and it's parent?
If you were to copy files to /usr on top of files already managed by a
package manager then you have created a situation where files are
corrupted as seen by the package manager and not managed by other
means. This appears as the "person with two watches never knows the
correct time" problem.
If you previously had svn installed using a package manager then 'make
install' into /usr would corrupt the installation. Removing the
package from the package manager would break the 'make install'
installation. Because both are poured into the same /usr directory it
is now a problem to know which files are managed by the package
manager and which are copied there by the user.
Files in /usr/local are solely the domain of the local admin. No
files are installed there by packages. (No packages from a
distribution. Local admins may create their own packages with files
there. By definitely that is a local change by the local admin.)
Therefore by default 'make install' will put all files in /usr/local
to eliminates any chance of collision with a file owned by a package,
a.k.a. /usr, the system. (If a local admin 'make install's on top of
a file from a locally built package then it would be their own fault
and arguably what they wanted to do because that is what they did.)
The /usr system above does not care about files in /usr/local and
files from /usr/local could be added or removed at any time without
breaking the system above it. They should be operating mostly
independently from each other. There is almost always some
cross-talk. But within reason this works pretty well.
Bob
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Received on Sun Aug 20 17:54:14 2006