Re: [9fans] 9vx patch to read environment var PLAN9

[Ethan Grammatikidis <eekee57@fastmail.fm>]

On 15 Apr 2010, at 08:39, EBo wrote:

>
>> Define reasonable. For me, that’s just 1 single spot. But it seems
>> the Linux people are very insistent on Freedom meaning do what you
>> want, even if it's against the build suggestions.
>> I say stick to one hardcoded path, and make everyone else stop doing
>> it their own way, and stick to one simple, consistent solution.
>
> Two possible guides are:
>
> Linux Standard Base <http://www.linuxfoundation.org/collaborate/workgroups/lsb 
> >
>
> and
>
> Filesystem Hierarchy Standard <http://proton.pathname.com/fhs/>

I deliberately avoided referring to these two... _interesting_  
documents. I studied the FHS at some length some years ago, not the  
latest version but the one before. As I understood it, it provides no  
possible place for a 9vx tree, for a plan9port tree, for a GNUStep  
tree, in short, for anything which does not conform precisely to the  
same layout of directories it specifies for /usr. The requirements  
for /opt at least have been softened in the latest version, so that a  
distro could 'legitimately' install 9vx or p9p under /opt, but I doubt  
it could be put anywhere else.

I won't comment on the LSB except to say that between the way Linux  
has been going lately and the almost perversely obsolete document the  
LSB was the last time I looked at it, I don't really want to know  
anything about it, least of all if it's been brought up to date.

I deliberately used the phrase "commonly used" in my earlier email  
because at the end of the day that's the only useful guide. In any  
case these standards are only made by taking common use and  
constraining it within (sometimes perverse) reasoning.

-- 
Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows it. -- Alan Perlis