On Monday 09 June 2003 03.15, Zach Smith wrote:
Ahhhh...I knew that title would make you look;-). Seriously though, is there a "standard" that most software developers in Linux follow with regards to where programs and files are installed on the disk?
Yes, it's called the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard. You can find it at http://www.pathname.com/fhs/
The reason I ask is because SuSE installs some of its various packages in places which are different from the software developer.
This is because the FHS specifies different directories for distributors and for software the user installs on his/her own.
For example, SuSE installs Mozilla in "/opt/mozilla" whereas the non-RPM download from the Mozilla sight defaults to "/usr/local/mozilla". The same holds true for OpenOffice. I upgraded to 1.0.3 and it installed in "/usr/local/OpenOffice.org 1.0.3". SuSE installed the earlier version in "/opt/OpenOffice 1.0.2".
/usr/local and /opt are places defined in the FHS as available for "local installations", i.e. installations of software you didn't get from your distributor. The FHS says that a system upgrade may wipe any software on any part of the disk, but is not allowed to touch things installed in /usr/local or /opt. For the exact wording (I'm a little inexact here) look at the standards document. The basic point is that if you want to keep the software across a systems upgrade, you should put it in the directories reserved for local installs.
Evolution defaults to "/opt/gnome/share/evolution" (version 1.2.3 and below). Any beta software of evolution from Ximian defaults to "/opt/gnome2/share/evolution".
Well, evolution 1.2.x was gnome and evolution 1.3.x (the betas) are gnome2 :)