Re: [gentoo-user] FreeBSD migration, what to do with /usr/local

[Thomas Mueller]

from Ian Zimmerman:

> I think I have written here previously that I want to move my _server_
> to FreeBSD.  I am still thinking about that.  But now I hit an
> obstacle.  For a long time, I have put my local kiddie scripts in
> /usr/local.  For better or worse, they are written in my dense style
> where any code duplication is avoided, and so they call one another a
> lot.
        
> But as you know FreeBSD directory hierarchy is different: /usr/local is
> for Packages and Ports.  I must move my scripts somewhere else to not
> conflict with P & P.  So the first problem is to come up with a
> location.  What does a typical BSD admin do in this situation?  I don't
> want to put them in my home directory because they're general purpose;
> at the very least I use them both as root and as an unprivileged user.

> A more serious problem is how to find all the situations where
> /usr/local is baked in.  It's not as simple as grep because when I
> could, I relied on the implicit PATH which would be configured somewhere
> else, or it might not even be configured - it might be compiled in (I
> think this is the case for some programs in the shadow package, and
> perhaps PAM modules).

> I don't think I can expect a simple answer, but if you ever faced such
> transition yourself, how did you approach it?

/usr/local is the default LOCALBASE in FreeBSD, but I believe you can set LOCALBASE to something else in your environment, which could be set in /etc/make.conf .

You could possibly copy Gentoo scripts to /usr/local/gentoo-scripts, or would that not work with your scripts as set up?

You would have to be careful setting up your PATH in .profile and /etc/profile , to make sure it includes the proper LOCALBASE.

Tom