RedHat, Fedora future?

[T. Ribbrock]

On Thu, Feb 05, 2004 at 05:15:20PM -0500, M.Hockings wrote:
i[...]
> I must admit that on more than one occasion I have installed something 
> in Linux (via RPM and via "make install") and the docs indicate  that it 
> would go to  /usr/local/bin/pgm-name but I find it in 
> /usr/bin/pgm-name.  What controls this?  Is it an exported (or somehow 
> retrieved) system setting, the RPM builder, the makefile author, or 
> what?  I have not viewed this an inhibitor to using RedHat, more like I 
> thought it was my inexperience with Linux leading me astray.
[...]

Most open source programs I;ve seen (especially, if they're GNU based)
have a default installation location of /usr/local/. Many authors just
hardcode this location in the documentation. Further, almost all
programs have an option to change the installation location at compile
time (e.g. all 'configure' based programs via the --prefix switch). rpm
can make use of those facilities to change the installation location at
build time, e.g. because the author to the "spec" file (which controls
how an RPM is built) wants it that way or to make it the same as the
preference of the distro. Unfortunately, there aren't many authors who
also include a facility to change the installation location *in the
documentation*. That means I can install something in /usr/*, while the
documentation still points to /usr/local/* - it's up to the author of
the program to fix that (or up to the packager to make a patch).

Cheerio,

Thomas
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                Thomas Ribbrock    http://www.ribbrock.org 
  "You have to live on the edge of reality - to make your dreams come true!"