> No, in GNU these programs should not be in /usr/local, because they
> *are* "the system".
Ah, yes, exactly. Except that even the GNU System has add-on
third-party packages and indeed I believe, correct me if I'm wrong, that
it is the practice on GNU systems to use /usr/local as the run-time
prefix of such add-on packages.
That is right. On a GNU system, some packages are "part of the
system", but there can be other packages you would think of as
"locally installed" and you might want to put them in /usr/local.
> / is the wrong place for such installation. The normal place to put
> most programs (at least today) is under /usr, not directly under /.
> For example, executables mostly go in /usr/bin, and only a few in
> /bin. So --prefix=/ is generally unreasonable. We certainly should
> not make this the standard way to ask for anything.
But you can't have your cake and eat it too -- i.e. you can't install
something as a system component in /bin or /sbin if you specify
--prefix=/usr
I am not completely sure what that *means*.
and at the same time expect that nothing will ever be
installed outside of where you set $(prefix) to be.
You have lost me here.
Unless the GNU System also wants to make the leap of eliminating either
/usr, or /bin and /sbin, it's necessary to use (or at least imply the
use of) "--prefix=/" to install packages as first-class native system
components.
prefix=/usr is the normal way to install packages as first-class
native system components. That puts the executable in /usr/bin, which
is the normal place for a first-class native system component. On
my machine, there are 66 files in /bin and over 1200 in /usr/bin.
We can think of /bin as a place where a few things get "promoted"
which would normally be in /usr/bin. In the past, sysadmins often
moved programs between /bin and /usr/bin based on local needs. In
other words, these are best thought of as two sides of a single
chamber, not as two chambers.
What's important here is if course that if you use --prefix=/ to
indicate a native system install
I am convinced we should not do that.
