On Thu, May 11, 2006 at 04:49:26PM -0400, Joe Smith wrote: > On the other hand, if we continue that thought process we could end up > with all headers and libraries in /usr/share/, which is absurd.
Why? This is exactly what's beautiful, especially if EVERYTHING ends up in /usr/share/ at one day, at which point /share/ will be redundant and the FHS will change. > Indeed, the current proposal almost seems to be reversing this. > >Non-target specific libraries and header files remain in $prefix/lib and > >$prefix/include. > It seems to me that libraries and headers that are not target specific are > supposed to go in /usr/share. > That is because if they are not target specific they are most certainly > cross-platform. I remember a lab that consisted mostly of SGI Indy boxes, a SunOS server, some O2 and a stray Linux or two. The common problem was incompatibility of binaries: things compiled on an Indy worked on the Indies and O2, but things compiled on O2 were incompatible with Indy. Exactly the same thing as i386->i486->i586->i686->amd64. Now, imagine that /usr/bin is split this way: /usr/bin (perl, bash) /usr/bin/indy (binaries) /usr/bin/o2 (binaries) /usr/bin/sun (binaries) [1] Can you see what I mean? By just having different PATHs, everything would be completely transparent. And the multiarch would take care of all libraries and headers. > Hm... This entire concept seems messy. It seems that processors that > support multiple architectures, as well as cross compilition are begining > to blur the line between /usr and /usr/share. It's not "messy", it's plain awesome. And if the line gets blurred into oblivion, it will be a reason for joy. [1] Ok, ok. I'm stretching it a bit, as SunOS was a different beast than IRIX. But if all boxes are Debian... Cheers. -- 1KB // Rule #6: If violence wasn't your last resort, // you failed to resort to enough of it. // - The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Pirates -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]