🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <ANDREW.91Oct13205548@multiwave.astro.psu.edu>, andrew@astro.psu.edu (Andrew Wilcox) writes:

> I don't think that GNU should put program files in different
> subdirectories the way that Unix does.
...
> Here is a sample directory structure.  The top level directory is
> "/programs".  Within "/programs" is a subdirectory for each package
> that is released with its own version number.  Thus we have
> "/programs/emacs-18.56", "/programs/binutils-1.2", and so on.  Within
> the package directory you would have "executable" (for binary
> programs, shell scripts, and perl programs that can be run), "info"
> (for the info files), "manual_pages" (for the UNIX style man pages),
> "libraries" (for the libxxx.a files), and "sources" (this is what you
> would read from the tar file), as well as any extra directories that
> the package needs ("lisp").

I don't really see the point of this.  I can certainly understand why
you would want to keep everything that belongs to a program in one
directory, but I also like to be able to look at all of the info files
there are, or all of the binaries, or all of the man pages, or
whatever.  So why not just leave /bin, /lib, /usr/man, etc. intact and
make symbolic links between there and the real locations of the files?
That way, you can organize your files both by package and by kind of
file, and you don't have to make any incompatible changes to your
filesystem layout.  (Which is, after all, an important consideration -
GNU is supposed to be Posix compatible, and it would be nice if all
that code out there written for Unix systems still worked under GNU.)
I mean, it's nice to keep all of the stuff for one package together,
but in most situations what you really care about is the kind of file
something is, not the package that it is part of.  When I type a
command name, all that my shell cares about is the names of programs;
when I read a man page, all that 'man' cares about is what man pages
are installed; and so forth.  And while it wouldn't be a horrible
complication to require all of those programs to have to search
through an extra level of directories, it is a complication that they
shouldn't really have to deal with, and one that is incompatible with
Unix.

> If you are using a virtual file system like Prospero, there is no need
> to use a PATH variable (or a MANPATH, or LD_LIBRARY_PATH, or...),
> except for compatibility with Unix.  The default "/programs" would
> contain the packages that users normally use.  To make your own
> programs accessible from the shell, you would make your own view of
> "/programs" that includes the directories that contain your programs.

Yeah, virtual filesystems rock.  I would like to be able to tailor
what the filesystem looks like on a per-process basis.

> Andrew Wilcox
> Department of Astronomy & Astrophysics, Pennsylvania State University
> (awilcox@astro.psu.edu)

david carlton
carlton@husc.harvard.edu

       Now that I have my ``APPLE,'' I comprehend COST ACCOUNTING!!