Re: Installation layout idea

On Fri, 4 Aug 2000, Peter Eisentraut wrote:

> It had occurred to me that it would be nice (if not necessary) that one
> could use `configure --prefix=/usr/local', and good things would happen.
> (replace /usr/local with any other shared prefix)
> 
> Currently, bad things will happen, in particular in the include dir, but
> also under share, with severe cluttering. It is common in these cases to
> create package-specific subdirectories (/usr/local/include/pgsql, etc.),
> as indeed the binary packages do.
> 
> Now it might be awkward to unconditionally append "pgsql" to various
> directory names; think `/usr/local/pgsql/include/pgsql'. Therefore I
> propose the following scheme, stolen in its entirety from Apache:
> 
> The string "pgsql/" will automatically be appended to datadir (not the
> same as PGDATA), sysconfdir, includedir, and docdir, unless one of the
> following is true:
> 
> 1) The user specified the particular directory manually (--sysconfdir,
> etc.), or
> 
> 2) The expanded directory name already contains the string "pgsql" or
> "postgres" somewhere.
> 
> I'd say that most users currently fall under exception 2), so they would
> not be affected. Those brave enough to try an install into /usr/local
> would finally get reasonable behaviour.
> 
> One fine day we might also want to consider changing the default directory
> names from "pgsql" to "postgresql". It's not nice to use two different
> names, and the tarball is already named "postgresql". Is that a reasonable
> possibility?

this one I have no problem with, specially since I would guess most
everyone's shells have tab-completion, and therefore it isn't as if they
have to type any more ...

I do have issues with the whole /usr/local/include/pgsql concept though
... that is one of the things that I *really* hate about FreeBSD ports
where they install qt 1.x in /usr/X11R6/include/qt and qt 2 in
/usr/X11R6/include/qt2, and ... *roll eyes*  I like the fact that
everything goes into one place ...