Re: FHS

[Lars Hecking]

Richard B. Kreckel writes:
> On Sat, 5 Jan 2002, Peter Eisentraut wrote:
> > > When upgrading some packages to AutoConf-2.52 I noticed that given
> > > --prefix=/usr, manpages go straight into /usr/man/.  Hmm, but we got a
> > > filesystem hierarchy standard <http://www.pathname.com/fhs/>!
> > 
> > But we've also got the GNU Coding Standards 
> > <http://www.gnu.org/prep/standards_toc.html>.
> 
> Okay, but I am unable to spot the contradiction with FHS.  For instance,
> it says:
> 
> `mandir' 
>       The top-level directory for installing the man pages (if any) for
>       this package. It will normally be `/usr/local/man', but you should
>       write it as `$(prefix)/man'. (If you are using Autoconf, write it as
>       address@hidden@'.) 
> 
> There, $(prefix)/man would be problematic, but if the Autoconf-generated
> configure would replace Makefile.in's @mandir@ with something appropiate
> everybody would be merry.  Wrong?
 
 I think the GNU Coding standards need revision in this regard.

 While I think that FHS was initiated by the Linux camp (not sure; I'm
 willing to be educated :), at least some commercial Unices now have the
 man pages under /usr/share/man (with a link from /usr/man for backwards
 compatibility), and this is exactly how I have been setting up
 $(prefix)/man here for years, because we have a /usr/local for a variety
 of architectures, and there's no need to have more than one copy of man
 pages and other static, shareable data.