Re: Relocatability of packages

["Scott Gifford" <sgifford tir com>]

>I was under the impression that the idea was to be able to move stuff
>around at will, so symlinks would break. And why is it better to symlink
>/usr/local/bin/foo to <some-random-prefix>/foo.app/foo than to just
>install foo into /user/local/bin in the first place? And that doesn't
>address the system-dependent vs. system-independent data problem.


  I had thought of it more from a Mac/Windows perspective, where an
application has an Actual Location, then you put symlinks/shortuts/aliases
to it from a menu, or from your desktop, or wherever else you want it to
appear.  This lets you install it anywhere, then just make the links in your
~/bin directory for yourself, or /usr/local/bin for everybody.  It also lets
the application keep its data next to it, rather than having to put a
program in /usr/local/bin, and its data in /usr/local/etc, and its libraries
in /usr/local/lib, etc.  This makes it much easier to delete an entire
application.

  It doesn't address either of the problems you mentioned.  I wasn't
necessarily advocating this scheme, I was just pointing out that there was
something easier than putting 700 entries in your $PATH...

-----Scott.