manpath change for ports ?

[scratch65535 at att.net]

On Wed, 8 Mar 2017 20:47:31 -0800, Kevin Oberman
<rkoberman at gmail.com> wrote:

>On Wed, Mar 8, 2017 at 12:35 PM, <scratch65535 at att.net> wrote:
>
>> On Tue, 7 Mar 2017 00:56:10 +0100, Baptiste Daroussin
>> <bapt at FreeBSD.org> wrote:
>>
>> >Hi all,
>> >
>> >I would like to propose a change in the localbase hier for ports
>> >
>> >I think we should add /usr/local/share/man in the manpath along with at
>> first
>> >and maybe instead of in long term.
>> >
>> >The reason is:
>> >- /usr/local/share/man seems more consistent to me with base which have:
>> >  /usr/share/man
>> >- It will remove lots of patches from the ports tree where were we need
>> to patch
>> >  upstream build system to install in a non usual path.
>> >
>> >My proposal is to add to the manpath /usr/local/share/man in default
>> man(1)
>> >command in FreeBSD 12 (MFCed to 11-STABLE)
>> >
>> >and either provide an errata for 11.0/10.3 or a
>> >/usr/local/etc/man.d/something.conf via a port or something like that
>> for those
>> >two, what do you think?
>> >
>> >For the same reason I would like to allow porters to stop patching (with
>> pathfix
>> >or anything else) the path for pkgconfig files and allow
>> >/usr/local/lib/pkgconfig along with the current
>> >/usr/local/libdata/pkgconfig:/usr/libdata/pkgconfig
>> >
>> >Which will also remove tons of hacks from the ports tree.
>> >
>> >What do you think?
>> >
>> >Best regards,
>> >Bapt
>>
>> I would argue that the same principle should be followed with
>> *everything*:  if it's at or applies to the application level, it
>> should be in /usr/local/, no exceptions.
>>
>> And if that conflicts with the native product documentation (e.g.
>> MySQL, MariaDB), the local mods should be right up at the top of
>> the relevant man page, not on some special web site or in some
>> special documentation hiding in the weeds somewhere.  Nobody
>> should have to chase down necessary information; if the man pages
>> are the canonical documentation, then all the facts should be on
>> the man page.
>>
>> And if something is not at the application level, then perhaps
>> this is the right time and place to have a conversation about
>> whether there should be a separate subtree for the layer between
>> the apps and the kernel, too.
>>
>> The desire for long-term stability, predictability, and freedom
>> from bugs is not a joke or a wish for a pony.  It's a basic
>> sine-qua-non necessity for production-quality software,
>> especially servers.   Would splitting off the middle layer from
>> the kernel help or hinder that goal?  The question must be worth
>> a conversation, and the sooner the better.
>>
>
>Wait a second! I don't think Bapt or anyone else was suggesting that ports
>install in any part of the tree other than /usr/local. Tr-read what he said.
>
>The discussion is whether to move from /usr/local/man to
>/usr/local/share/man as well as other directories that normally in
>/usr/[share|info||libexe] under Linux systems.

I wasn't suggesting that Bapt or anyone was suggesting that,
honest.  

I'm only arguing for greater consistency and simplicity than is
now the case.

Anyone who looks at fbsd (unix) from a human-factors standpoint
sees an incoherent picture made up of the (joking-but-not-
really-funny) "a phd hack, three master's theses, and a thousand
undergraduate term projects".  It lacks integrity and simplicity,
and consequently is needlessly hard to use, hard to maintain,
hard to love, and impossible to promote to the larger world.

We shouldn't be doing *anything* for the sake of consistency with
linux.  No change should be made for any reason other than the
result would be obviously *better* from a human-factors
standpoint.  If that means we steal some stuff from linux, fine. 
But doing anything for the sake of being "more like linux" is
barking nuts!  Linux is already as much like linux as anything
can be, so if our only goal is to make fbsd "more like linux",
then let's just grab a copy of some linux distro and call it
fbsd.  Voila!, instant 100% linux compatibility with 99.999% less
work.  Everyone could relax!

But that would be a going-out-of-business strategy, and I'm
certainly not suggesting it seriously.

What we should be doing for real is moving toward *replacing*
linux AND windows.  Make *them* go obsolete by becoming
less-obnoxious and more understandable.  We're already sturdier.

And a nice first step would be to start cleaning up the craziness
in the tree by moving *all* the apps-layer stuff to /usr/local.