June 2010 Archives

Here are some variants that I've seen so far.

1. Careful people that are afraid to spoil the system use:

   • /usr/local
   • /var/local
   • /opt

2. Crazy people have always an original place to hide files in:

   • /usr/local64
   • /usr/local/64
   • /usr/local/local
   • /shared
   • /corp
   • /data
   • ...

3. Linux distributions put files according to the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard.

Some years ago I belonged to the first group and I was putting everything into /usr/local to be sure that there is just my stuff. Today I belong to the second one... I use /data for my laptop. Which is not so great idea, but it is my laptop and no one ever will have to (won't even be able) to touch it, so it is my mess. Some of the other ones like /corp, /shared and /usr/local64 I have to use at $work, because it is ops decision or a historical reason (sniff, sniff).

I hope one day I'll further evolve to work according to the standards. Tiding-up my mess would be the easy part of the journey...

Some people say that specifications are useless. That they never reflect the reality, that by the time of being done they are out-dated and people should just rush out, start coding and start working. I found this nice quote:

That was my missing piece to the argumentation. May be the specs at the end are "not so accurate", but at the time of writing them, the idea has to be exercised, questioned, the missing gaps filled in, all details understood and the goal clearly defined.