Re: Installing in FHS locations

[Bob Proulx]

Wichmann, Mats D <address@hidden> [2002-12-16 13:02:22 -0800]:
> 
> It appears to me that the current coreutils 
> drop, 4.5.4 - the first I've looked at -
> does not have a way to install per FHS
> guidelines for locations of binaries.  It
> appears there's only the ability to install
> into a single binary directory.

This has been discussed at length many times on the autoconf and
automake lists.  You might want to read the discussion here as one
place to start.

  http://mail.gnu.org/pipermail/autoconf/2002-January/012168.html

The GNU coreutils uses autoconf and automake as the primary build
methodology.  Therefore this problem is not in any way specific to
coreutils but is generic to any package that use those tools.  You
could create your own installation methodology.  But the autotools are
too useful and convenient to ignore.  A packager is expected to move
things around as needed to suit whichever standard to which they are
trying to conform.

Also, the default installation location is /usr/local.  That follows
best practices for someone who is just doing a 'configure', 'make',
'make install' and to have it just work.  In that case the default
behavior is just what is needed.  That follows the rule of make easy
things easy and hard things possible.

> In the fileutils-shutils-textutils setup, I ended up only having to
> move 'cat' to comply with the FHS.

That seems odd.  By my count there are at least 26 programs that need
to be moved into /bin and 61 that are left in /usr/bin.  At the very
least to follow FHS you need these in /bin.

  cat chgrp chmod chown cp date dd df dir echo false ln ls mkdir mknod
  mv pwd rm rmdir sleep stty sync touch true uname vdir

Bob

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