[oi-dev] Desktop Illumos Still Matters
Andrew Gabriel
illumos at cucumber.demon.co.uk
Wed Sep 5 17:55:46 UTC 2012
Nick Zivkovic wrote:
> Agreed. Also, I see that /opt and /usr/$consolidation overlap in terms
> of their purpose.
>
> For example we have /usr/X11. According to `man filesystem` /opt is
> meant to hold add-on/third-party software.
>
/opt was meant for unbundled software. Ideally, it should be empty
immediately following a full install of a distro, as everything is by
definition bundled. I don't think Solaris ever quite got that right, but
it was almost there. Everything you install after that (which isn't part
of the distro) should be in /opt (and /etc/opt and /var/opt), but a lot
of 3rd-party software developers got that wrong too.
> If that's the case shouldn't X11 be in /opt/X11? Or should the
> convention be updated, so that we store the bundles or consolidation
> in /usr as is already being done?
>
> If sub-directories of /usr are separate datasets (like /usr/X11 is
> rpool/X11), that should make migration easier.
>
> Basically, I'm asking if it is better to have one convention
> (everything in /usr/$consolidation) instead of two (some things in
> /usr/$consolidation and others in /opt/$consolidation)?
>
There's never been any rule about consolidations being funneled into
specific directories. It may be that it makes sense in a few specific
cases because of functional groupings, but not universally.
--
Andrew
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