Re: Software/HD ecology

[Ajanta <ajanta@no.spam>]

Lee Sau Dan <danlee@informatik.uni-freiburg.de> wrote:

> Why in the first place would the program NEED to install files all
> over the place?

It doesn't, shouldn't, but many do.
 
> Unix  is  well  designed.  Most  (if  not  all)  GNU programs  can  be
> configured   to   be   installed   anywhere...

The complaint in this sub-thread is that many times programs come with
bad default choices. Often, to compound the problem, there is no
uninstall. This is not about Unix, but people who write, manage, or
distribute programs. I used the term unix to refer to the community and
its culture, not the OS.

> To uninstall  the application,  simply "rm -rf /usr/local/foobar" and
> you're done!

Here is the example a poster gave from his system. There may or may not
be other emacs related named files there, these are just the matches on
the *name* emacs:

   % find /usr -name emacs -print
   /usr/bin/emacs
   /usr/info/emacs
   /usr/libexec/emacs
   /usr/local/bin/emacs
   /usr/share/emacs
   /usr/share/info/emacs

To duplicate the convenience implied in your suggestion, one would have
to delete /usr.

> Anyway, nowadays,  people almost always use package  managers, such as
> RPM in RedHat and SuSE.

To have package managers which work on only one or two sub-flavors or,
as in Fink's case, only on the software downloaded from one source is
really not such a hot solution (though a welcome "patch").

What is needed: 

(1) To change the culture, so that every program comes with a safe and
complete uninstall option. 

(2) To empower the user, so he/she can easily discover what a
particular file on his/her computer is for, and where are all the files
related to the package xyz. I think you want to be able to specify the
source (GNU or FSF), name (emacs), and version (27.5) with intelligent
defaults, like all versions when none is specified.

> That explains why the issue you  raised out is a non-problem for Unix.
> Unix  has been  supporting  long file  names  for a  long time.

I haven't come across many programs with long descriptive file names.
However, I'll avoid this direction because I view it as less relevant.
I want precise and reliable tools to know what a file was for. I don't
want to guess such things from names. 

A