relocatable packages ?

[Michael A. Peters]

On Wed, 2005-06-22 at 00:09 -0400, seth vidal wrote:
> On Tue, 2005-06-21 at 23:03 -0500, Jason L Tibbitts III wrote:
> > >>>>> "DK" == David Kewley <kewley at gps.caltech.edu> writes:
> > 
> > DK> I've made relocatable rpms for e.g. Matlab.  My idea is that I
> > DK> want it in /opt but my colleague across campus might want it in
> > DK> /usr/local/.  No way does it belong in /usr.
> > 
> > I put Matlab in /usr, as with anything that I install using the
> > package system.  I'm not sure why something like, say, Octave or
> > R would go in /usr but Matlab or Splus wouldn't.
> 
> Well if you read the fhs there is a good reason to keep matlab out
> of /usr.
> http://www.pathname.com/fhs/pub/fhs-2.3.html#THEUSRHIERARCHY
> read the 4th sentence
> 
> and then:
> 
> http://www.pathname.com/fhs/pub/fhs-2.3.html#OPTADDONAPPLICATIONSOFTWAREPACKAGES
> 
> 
> so /opt is the appropriate place according to the fhs
> 
> /usr/local is wrong b/c package-managed software should not be
> in /usr/local

Before fhs (or at least before I knew about) Dad, a long time Uni
(Berkeley) programmer/sys admin (mostly AIX/Solaris) - explained it to
me this way:

Vendor packages: /usr
Third party packages - fully contained in /opt/vendor/package (with
symlinks in /usr/local/bin and /usr/local/man)
local compiled: /usr/local

Seems a decent amount of commercial rpm's for Linux put stuff
in /usr/local - but I think that's wrong.