Kai Großjohann <kai.grossjohann@uni-duisburg.de> wrote:

> Luis Fernandes <elf@ee.ryerson.ca> writes:
> 
> > Only /usr/local/bin needs to be in the user's path. After installing
> > emacs, I manually make the links from /usr/local/bin to
> > /usr/local/emacs-21.1/bin.
> 
> You will need similar links for the man pages and for the info
> files.  (And for info, there is the `dir' file to take care of.)

Exactly what I was thinking.
 
> IMHO, a software isn't fully installed unless its documentation is
> also easily accessible.

And some software need editable configuration files, which should be
under /etc and be preserved on upgrades.  It's all starting to sound
like package management to me.