<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><br class=""><div><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div class="">On Nov 3, 2014, at 20:50, Herbert Schulz <<a href="mailto:herbs@wideopenwest.com" class="">herbs@wideopenwest.com</a>> wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><div class=""><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; float: none; display: inline !important;" class="">I guess I don't know why a directory named /usr shouldn't be useful for stuff that is used by all users of a system.</span><br style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;" class=""></div></blockquote><div><br class=""></div><div>Because it is owned by the operating system; updates, etc. do not expect to find user-defined stuff in that location, or /, for that matter. So if you put things under, say, the /usr tree, there is no guarantee that it will be survive an update or upgrade unscathed. System installers don’t check because those places are their playground [1]. There are global subtrees which have been reserved for such purposes, the most (in)famous being of course /usr/local, but there are others: /Library (and notice: not /System/Library) and /Applications, if we stick to OS X, but more generally on UNIX-like systems /opt a common choice, where a relatively large package would create a subtree /opt/<package-name>. This is why I think /usr/texbin is a poor choice from a system engineering point of view.</div><div><br class=""></div><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div class=""><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; float: none; display: inline !important;" class="">By the way, if you are really philosophically against the use of /usr/texbin there is a Preference Pane put together by Dick Koch (author and maintainer of TeXShop as well as the MacTeX distribution) that creates and maintains a symbolic link ~/Library/TeX/texbin so that each user can work with a different TeX distribution. Go to <</span><a href="http://www.tug.org/mactex/" style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;" class="">http://www.tug.org/mactex/</a><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; float: none; display: inline !important;" class="">> and click on the link (about 7 lines down) about MacTeX and Yosemite for more information.</span><br style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;" class=""></div></blockquote><div><br class=""></div>It’s not that I’m against it per se, but for the reasons explained above. I am perfectly happy with global installations. However, I have texlive installed under /opt/texlive/yyyy</div><div><br class=""></div><div>—Ettore</div><div><br class=""></div><div>[1] A partial exception is /etc, because it contains (mostly) configuration files. And those are preserved during updates. If you check, you’ll find several filenames with -previous appended. So, for example, when you install XQuartz it will change /etc/sshd_config. An OS upgrade will replace that file with its own, but copy the old one to /etc/sshd_config-previous, so you can get your changes back up online. /etc also has path information, so you can put add-ons, such as, /usr/texbin(!), or /usr/X11/bin, into /etc/paths.d</div><div class=""><br class=""></div>--<br class=""><div apple-content-edited="true" class="">
<div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Georgia; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: -webkit-auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Georgia; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: -webkit-auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Georgia; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: -webkit-auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Georgia; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: -webkit-auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div class=""><font face="Osaka-Mono" class="">Ettore Aldrovandi</font></div><div class=""><font face="Osaka-Mono" class="">Department of Mathematics, Florida State University</font></div><div class=""><font face="Osaka-Mono" class="">1017 Academic Way * <a href="http://www.math.fsu.edu/~ealdrov" class="">http://www.math.fsu.edu/~ealdrov</a></font></div><div class=""><font face="Osaka-Mono" class="">Tallahassee, FL 32306-4510, USA * * aldrovandi at math dot fsu dot edu</font></div></div></div></div></div></div>
</div>
<br class=""></body></html>