Re: Configuration files

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Yes, I would agree. Expanding on this, FreeBSD always installs ports under /usr/local no matter what. This way all files specific to the OS go in /etc and all additional ports go in /usr/local/etc. It's the same with documentation, binaries, and such. Debian never puts anything in /usr/local because that is set aside for the local administrator. Debian packages are never supposed to touch any files in /usr/local if my understanding is correct. The problem you have with just letting things go where they will is that you end up with multiple binaries for the same program. I ran into this with an ftp server. The Debian version went to /usr/sbin and the local version went to /usr/local/sbin. The Debian version kept being called because it was first in the path. Yet another example is Qmail. It expects a set of subdirs under /var/qmail and doesn't go in /usr/local at all, even though it probably should.

Geoff Shang wrote:

The issue here is that different systems have different defaults. Debian packages have a standard place for putting things. Tarballs usually install to /usr/local but not always. Other systems or distributions will install to other places. I don't have anyhting in /opt on my system for example but some do.

You basically have two options. First, you can put everything in the same place so you know where to find it, though you can run into trouble if you mix packages with source tarballs. The second is to let things go where they go and live with it.

I usually do the latter, partly because I prefer to install tarballs to /usr/local and let packages install to other places, and partly because I'm too lazy to bother with configure options, etc.

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