[arch-general] About /usr/local/sbin -> bin move

[Chris Down]

On 3 June 2013 21:01, Rodrigo Rivas <rodrigorivascosta at gmail.com> wrote:
> Dear ArchGeneral List,
>
> First of all, congratulations for another brave step forward with the /*bin
> -> /usr/bin move. All my Arch boxes upgraded with no pain.
>
> But I've noticed that there has been some discussion about moving
> /usr/local/sbin -> /usr/local/bin.
>
> Beware! There are packages out there that are distributed as tarballs and
> install themselves on /usr/local. I don't know how frequent they are, but
> I've seen them. And if they happen to contain any file in /usr/local/sbin,
> when untarring, it will silently overwrite the symbolic link with the real
> directlry breaking any application that depends on it, and making future
> upgrades to `filesystem` impossible.
>
> Yes, it can be fixed simply running tar with the -h (--dereference) flag,
> but who will remember that?
>
> Just my 0.02€.

Tarballs can't really "install themselves". If they're being
distributed with absolute paths, you shouldn't be untarring them to
the root directory by default anyway, that's pretty much asking for
trouble. Extract them to a sane directory and then install what you
want to the system by hand.