[Tack-devel] OT (Re: ACK_HOME and em_path)

[<u-...@ae...>]

On Thu, Mar 07, 2019 at 05:24:37PM +0100, David Given wrote:
> /opt vs /usr/local has been a long-standing holy war --- there's really
> very little in it. There both intended for add-on packages not supplied
> with the system. I grew up with /usr/local, so that's the one I picked.
> Anyone building distributable binaries will customise the setting anyway.
> 
> When you say 'other platforms', which ones do you mean? AFAIK OSX, Cygwin
> and Haiku all use /usr/local, or close-enough.

OT for the list and this thread, but all those "holy wars" about
"where stuff should be placed on every machine" were/are a result of
a misconception.

It is the hardcoded paths which make the exact placement "critical".

As soon as one distingushes between

1. "having the stuff" (any path is good enough)
2. "running the stuff" (what we need is a reference in the PATH or menus
   or alike, I call this "inlaying")
3. "letting the program know where to find what it needs" (which
   is to give it environment variables or alike, instead of hardwiring
   this into the binaries)

then it becomes apparent that the "administrative syncronization of paths
everywhere" is an artificial (and of course not solvable :) problem,
created by the intention to hardwire the references instead of letting
them be specified as-needed.

Rune