Nethack 3.4.3 [PSARC/2008/172 FastTrack timeout 03/11/2008]

[Danek Duvall]

On Fri, Mar 07, 2008 at 03:20:07PM -1000, Joseph Kowalski wrote:

> I'll point out there is a separate place for such things.  It's called 
> $HOME.
>
> And please get it right, its Tuedays.  :-)
>
> And as I said, the discussion of separation by usage class (or whatever) is
> interesting, and we've had that discussion before and we will probably see
> it again.

I really hope not.  Bart's flip responose was better than mine.  Do we want
/usr/editors?  /usr/terminal-emulators?  Would you prefer that we'd never
linked the java executable into /usr/bin?

I really don't see the value of siloing executables by what kinds of things
they are, aside from project-private executables and those that only people
with privilege would ever find useful (and I mean ever).

> The much more important thing is familiarity for Linux users.

Definitely.  But I think you can take that too far.

> BTW: If nothing else, could you not overload the existing /usr/games with a 
> new semantic? Now we are faced with somebody who is used to finding the
> game executables in the familiar place and finding something else there 
> entirely.

So, for example, Ubuntu ships the nethack executable as
/usr/games/nethack-console.  Gentoo installs it in /usr/games/bin/nethack.
Fedora Core 8 ships it as /usr/bin/nethack.  Which of those are you most
familiar with?

There are loads of places in Linux where they're either inconsistent or
just plain broken.  I don't think we have to slavishly follow someone else
when they're clearly not leading.

>> More than this thread has become?

I apologize for this.  You certainly didn't deserve that.

> Well, I'm sorry, but I actually believe this is important.  I believe we
> have been given direction to be as "familiar" as possible with respect to
> Linux.  I personally felt that this whole concept, although a good one,
> was taken too far.  However, I am bound to either "agree and commit,
> disagree and commit, or get out of the way".  I thought this was what we
> were all bound to do.

It's not a black-and-white situation -- "familiarity with Linux" isn't a
perfectly clear thing that you can actually agree and commit to (or not).
In a very narrow view, though, I would expect familiarity to be less about
perfect path mimicry than it is about easily finding various components
that you're used to.  That is, things are available, and not hidden.  I
would expect people to be far more likely to invoke nethack as "nethack"
than as "/usr/games/nethack" or whatever else, and putting executables in
/usr/bin if there's no reason to put them elsewhere seems like a great way
to make everyone happy.

Danek