A while back I installed couchdb from source on my debian machine. It seemed to install okay and everything worked.
A few weeks later I wanted to upgrade and installed from a .deb using dpkg. Everything now seems to have been installed under /opt
. It all seems to work fine, but I don't really understand why it's all been installed under /opt
. It doesn't feel as "smooth" as when things were installed directly into /usr/local/bin
and /etc
and /var/log
. It's more cumbersome to configure than when I previously just edited the configuration files that were installed under /etc/couchdb
Would someone mind explaining to me why installation to /opt
is "a good thing" and why this is a better way of doing things than the previous installation which was from the source?
I know this is a rather vague question but I'm only competent with Linux not an expert and don't understand the thinking behind installing to /opt
Best Answer
The Filesystem Hierarchy Standard gives these definitions:
/opt
: Add-on application software packages/usr/local
: Local hierarchy (for use by the system administrator when installing software locally)The way I read that:
/bin
and/usr/bin
(implied)/opt
/usr/local
if the system administrator wants it toBy extension, if the sysadmin installs something using
dpkg
orrpm
, it should not go into/usr/local
by default.So it's arguably doing the right thing.