Re: location of the configuration files

"scott.marlowe" <scott.marlowe@ihs.com> writes:

> But this isn't the same thing at all.  Apache, when built from a tar ball, 
> goes into /usr/local/apache/ and ALL it's configuration files are there.  

Two comments:

1) Even in that case the config files go into /usr/local/apache/conf and the  other kinds of files like data logs and
cachefiles, all go in other  subdirectories.
 

2) What you describe is only true if you configure with the default  "--with-layout=Apache". The naming should perhaps
bea clue that this isn't  a conventional layout. If you configure with --with-layout=GNU you get the  conventional Unix
layoutin /usr/local, If you use --with-layout=RedHat you  get the conventional layout in /usr directly which is mainly
usefulfor  distribution packagers.
 

Putting stuff in a subdirectory like /usr/local/apache or /usr/local/pgsql is
unfortunately a widespread practice. It does have some advantages over the
conventional layout in /usr/local/{etc,bin,...} directly. But the major
disadvantage is that users can't run programs without adding dozens of entries
to their paths, can't compile programs without dozens of -L and -I lines, etc.

GNU autoconf script makes it pretty easy to configure packages to work either
though, and /usr/local is the purview of the local admin. As long as it's easy
to configure postgres to install "properly" with --prefix=/usr/local it won't
be any more of an offender than lots of other packages like apache, kde, etc.

Though I'll mention, please make it $prefix/etc not $prefix/conf. No need to
be gratuitously non-standard on an arbitrary name, and no need to pollute
/usr/local with multiple redundant directories.

-- 
greg