On Sun, 30 Jan 2005, Jochen Voss wrote: > Hello John, > > On Sat, Jan 29, 2005 at 11:46:12AM -0600, John Hasler wrote: > > Jochen Voss writes: > > > Any references for this? I was a little bit disappointed that the FHS > > > was so unclear about /usr/bin and I do not know where else to look. > > > > While the FHS is not as explicit as it might be, with the application of a > > bit of common sense it is sufficiently clear. > > One should think so, but the presence of /usr/bin/gettect.sh and > the fact that my bug report was closed by the maintainer shed some > doubt on it. Any idea how I should proceed?
I suggest that you read the reply by the author. For the benefit of those who don't have web browsers, I'll quote it here: gettext.sh is meant to be sourced from shell scripts, using the "." command. This command looks in $PATH, but none of the subdirectories of /usr/share/gettext is present in $PATH. You can also see it this way: POSIX /bin/sh supports the concept of functions. As in any programming language, functions can be grouped together in a file called "library". As in any programming language, such libraries can be loaded. In C it's via dlsym(), in sh it's via ".". Where does dlsym() look up the libraries? In /usr/lib. So Debian installs C libraries in /usr/lib/. Fine. Where does "." look up the libraries? Anywhere in $PATH. In particular in /usr/bin. If the Debian project designates a particular directory for shell script function libraries, and puts this directory in $PATH by default, GNU gettext will happily install its contents there. If it doesn't, then - by the analogy with /usr/lib above - there is nothing wrong with gettext.sh in /usr/lib/. So, the common sense says /usr/bin is ok for gettext.sh, not the opposite. If you want to make policy that /usr/bin should only contain executables, go ahead, make a policy proposal, but none of you have answered to the question made by Frank Küster: Do you think we should simply not make any use of the POSIX feature that . $name will look for $name in the $PATH? Or do you think we should add a directory to PATH that is then dedicated to such shell snippets? Anyway, this is a policy issue, so please followup to debian-policy.
