[Mimedefang] /opt (was: Notice: Dropping support for RAV AntiVirus)

[Kenneth Porter]

--On Tuesday, June 10, 2003 8:21 PM -0500 Justin Shore <listuser at numbnuts.net>
wrote:

> I'm aware of FHS unfortunately.  IMHO FHS is completely and utterly
> useless (I had another word here that I choose to remove).  But then again
> that's just my very opinionated self talking.  Standardization is nice but
> that doesn't in any way shape or form mean a 3rd-party package can't be
> "relocatable."

Under FHS, /usr/local is now reserved for site use. 3rd party apps are
forbidden from installing stuff there, because it might overwrite the admin's
customizations. /opt was adopted as a place that's "safe" for third parties to
use.

The whole point of FHS is to encourage development of 3rd party apps by not
forcing them to customize their deployment for every random distro or flavor
of *nix.

Relocation is a nice feature but it requires additional work (ie. code) if a
program needs to access its files from different parts of the tree, as one
must then compute all paths dynamically. FHS eliminates that work (which could
be better spent enhancing some other part of the app).