On Wed, Oct 04, 2000 at 04:02:51AM -0700, Ka-Ping Yee wrote: > So the natural question to ask is -- why not install Python in /usr/bin > like everyone else? > Perhaps a while ago Python wasn't popular enough to belong in /usr/bin > and decided to modestly stay out of the way in /usr/local/bin instead? The only reason is the hysterical one: it's always been that way. Traditionally, /usr/local/bin was the place for user-installed binaries. This sets them apart from the the vendor-supplied binaries (commonly in /bin and /usr/bin, where /bin are the tools necessary to boot and mount /usr, and /usr/bin is the rest) and the vendor-installed 3rd-party binaries (commonly in /usr/contrib/bin, or /opt/bin, or /opt/gnu/bin, and the like.) > But by now, i think it's quite qualified to take its seat in /usr/bin > along with all the other standard Unix binaries like /usr/bin/vi, > /usr/bin/ftp, /usr/bin/perl, etc. Python *should* be in the default > binary directory. Perl only resides in /usr/bin if the vendor (or distribution-maker, in the case of the Free OSes) put it there. The default for Perl is /usr/local as well. In fact, almost all source packages default to /usr/local; I have yet to see a package that uses autoconf and does not have /usr/local as the default prefix, for instance. I think the best solution is just for every OS to put /usr/local/bin in their path, and not pretend they delivered the Definitive Collection of Useful Programs. Installing Python in /usr can do more damage than good -- think of all the people that are used to have it installed in /usr/local, don't specify a prefix because they 'know' it's /usr/local by default, and end up filling up their minimal /usr partition with Python ;) -- Thomas Wouters <thomas@xs4all.net> Hi! I'm a .signature virus! copy me into your .signature file to help me spread!
RetroSearch is an open source project built by @garambo | Open a GitHub Issue
Search and Browse the WWW like it's 1997 | Search results from DuckDuckGo
HTML:
3.2
| Encoding:
UTF-8
| Version:
0.7.4