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Re: [Nmh-workers] --prefix=/usr/local issues

2013-03-21 21:14:28
On 21 March 2013 at 18:54, Bill Wohler <wohler(_at_)newt(_dot_)com>wrote:

Lyndon Nerenberg <lyndon(_at_)orthanc(_dot_)ca> writes:

On 2013-03-18, at 7:36 PM, belg4mit(_at_)pthbb(_dot_)org wrote:

I configured and compiled with --prefix /usr/local
and things worked fine. Unfortunately, the whatnow
prompt reports the following when I try to send:
 unable to exec /usr/local/nmh/lib/post: No such file or directory

Unrelated, but this reminds me of another nit I have with --prefix.

Currently we install the etc stuff into ${prefix}/etc, which spams
/usr/local/etc pretty hard when faced with --prefix=/usr/local.
Personally, I'm not a fan of the /usr/local/nmh default prefix, and
would prefer to see it changed to /usr/local, with the configdir stuff
pushed down a level to $prefix/etc/nmh. (And libexec stuff in
$prefix/libexec/nmh, etc) I think most people expect things to install
this way, and just show up in their $PATH (which, presumably, already
has /usr/local/bin in place).

I don't like clutter in the /usr/local namespace.

I tend to agree.  I've always assumed that /usr/local namespace was
meant to mimic / with bin,lib,etc,sbin, and include - later lib64 and
share.

If nmh is installed in the main system, we might see /etc/nmh,
/usr/bin/mh, and /usr/lib/mh, and it should be similar in /usr/local.

much in the same way ssh is currently installed on most systems.

However, /opt is not organized like /usr/local, so setting prefix to
/opt might be an interesting alternative.

I second this notion.  /opt seems to be populated by companyname or
product name, so this would actually fit quite well with nmh (/opt/nmh).

One thing I've done on my system to make testing the betas and new releases
is to override --prefix with /usr/local/nmh-{VERSION} and then create a
symlink back to /usr/local/nmh - that way I never change my PATH variable
and have the older versions available if I encounter a problem.

jerry
     // Jerry Heyman               | A government that is big enough to give
    //  Amigan Forever :-)         | you everything you want, is big enough
\\ //   heymanj at acm dot org     | to take away everything you have
 \X/    http://www.hobbeshollow.com| -- Thomas Jefferson

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