OS X Installer

[Michel Fortin]

On 2009-08-01 20:15:41 -0400, Sergey Gromov <snake.scaly at gmail.com> said:

> Here's a nice document about directory layout in UNIX-like OSes:
> 
> http://www.pathname.com/fhs/pub/fhs-2.3.html
> 
> I think MacOS should follow this layout at least in part.  In particular
> /usr/local/ is used for locally installed packages which otherwise
> respect the standard directory structure found in / or /usr/.  That is,
> binaries go into /usr/local/bin/, libraries in /usr/local/lib/ etc.  If
> a package wants to keep its own structure it's supposted to go into
> /opt/, like /opt/dmd2/whatever.

Well, given that this is Mac OS X we could also put this in 
/Library/D/dmd and /Library/D/dmd2, two directories which aren't hidden 
by the file browser. Then put symlinks in /usr/local/bin and 
/usr/local/lib pointing there. Users will then be able to upgrade 
without an installer by simply replacing the folder at /Library/D/dmd & 
dmd2 with a newly downloaded one.

I think that's better than /opt, as /opt isn't present by default on 
Mac OS X, isn't hidden by the Finder when present (contrary to all 
other "UNIX" directories at the root) and thus would look a little out 
of place on the hard drive. And there's already /Library/Python, 
/Library/PHP and /Library/Ruby in that /Library directory to set a 
precedent.

-- 
Michel Fortin
michel.fortin at michelf.com
http://michelf.com/