Subject: Re: /opt vs. /usr/local <Pine.SUN.3.90.940905032734.14064E-100000@xochi>

From: "L. Todd Masco" <[email-masked]>

Charles Ewen MacMillan writes:
 > > /usr/local/* has indeed been the standard for the BSD world; /opt/* has
 > >  been standard for the SVR4 world.
 > > 
 > 
 >  This is stating the obvious, but we are after all dealing with 
 >  the BSD realm rather than SVr4.

This strikes me as a religious argument: there's no reason to stick with
 either tradition purely because "this is BSD," should people think one
 system is better than the other.

As I said, I don't see that the /opt/* is tremendously better
 than /usr/local/*, but that line of reasoning could be applied to
 the other example I gave, rc.local vs. /etc/rc.*.  In that case,
 I think that /etc/rc.* is clearly better, and keeping to one
 initialization script is just plain dumb.

 >  Adding extra search paths for executables, especially over an NFS 
 > mounted directory, adds to rather irritating delays for start times, which
 > can be significant in heavily loaded multi-user systems.

Only on starting a shell;  The hash table is built at the shell's start-up
 (ironically enough, on csh-using systems; ksh is a SVR4-shell, and it
 doesn't use a hash table in the same way), not at the time of execution
 of a new program.  
--
L. Todd Masco  | "Which part of 'shall not be infringed' didn't
[email-masked]  |   you understand?"