[fhs-discuss] Purpose of /usr/local

[Ruslan Nabioullin]

Hello,

FHS-2.3 states "The /usr/local hierarchy is for use by the system
administrator when installing software locally." This is vague - what
exactly is the meaning of "...installing software locally"? It could be
interpreted as installing software endemic to a particular system (e.g.,
system-wide backup bash scripts) or as installing "general-purpose"
software under some certain circumstances (suggested from the
observation that a large proportion of installation scripts of software
projects use "/usr/local" as the prefix by default).

Thanks in advance,
-Ruslan
--
Ruslan Nabioullin
rnabioullin at gmail.com

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[Felix Miata]

Post by Ruslan Nabioullin
FHS-2.3 states "The /usr/local hierarchy is for use by the system
administrator when installing software locally." This is vague - what
exactly is the meaning of "...installing software locally"? It could be
interpreted as installing software endemic to a particular system (e.g.,
system-wide backup bash scripts) or as installing "general-purpose"
software under some certain circumstances (suggested from the
observation that a large proportion of installation scripts of software
projects use "/usr/local" as the prefix by default).

I've always taken locally to mean outside the package management system
native to the distribution. I put mostly Mozilla products packaged by
Mozilla.org there, where they cause no conflicts with Mozilla products
packaged by the distro. Since I multiboot most machines, these Mozilla
products are install once/use many, with /usr/local on a separate partition I
mount identically to each installed distro while it's booted.