Re: "Program Files" folder

[John Emmas <johne53 tiscali co uk>]

On 21 Apr 2011, at 10:59, Dov Grobgeld wrote:

> There is no such thing as default folder under Linux/Unix. The user might want to install an application in 
> her home directory, or in /opt, or in /usr/bin depending on permissions or the visibility of the 
> application. Perhaps you meant to ask if it is possible to know where the application was run from? In that 
> case just check argv[0].

Thanks Dov.  Strictly speaking of course, the same is true for Windows since there's nothing that inherently 
forces any user to install their files under "C:\Program Files".  It's just a common convention.  What I 
wanted to find out is if there are similar concepts on the other platforms.

In my Linux distro (64studio), /bin and /opt can only be written to by root - whereas /usr/bin and 
/usr/local/bin can be written to by anyone.  .usr/bin seems to contain what I'd loosely call "operating 
system programs", whereas /usr/local/bin seems to contain (again very loosely) programs that I've installed 
myself.  I was just wondering if that's a general convention?  Here's what the manual for automake says:-

" After everything has been built, and maybe tested, it is time to install it on the system. [...] The 
command make install will do that. However, by default everything will be installed in subdirectories of 
‘/usr/local’:  binaries will go into ‘/usr/local/bin’, libraries will end up in ‘/usr/local/lib’. "

I realise that automake is only one of several build systems but it seems to suggest that '/usr/local' is its 
default install location if nothing else was specified.

So I guess the question I'm asking is whether or not, by convention, /usr/local and /usr/local/bin will tend 
to have universal read, write and execute permissions.  They do in my distro but there are many other 
distros..!

John