Aw: Re: Installation: Manual text

Most people have their own computers nowadays and I never log on as `root'=
 or as a user with root permissions unless I have to.  None of the softwar=
e I've worked on in the last 10 years plus requires root permissions for a=
nything (installing or running) so I always install it somewhere under my =
home directory.

I therefore think that /usr/bin or /usr/local/bin or any such directory is=
 a poor choice for the default for `configure' because it will always fail=
 if users don't happen to have root permissions and if they do, they might=
 well overwrite an existing version of the software that came with the ins=
tallation or they installed later with synaptic, apt-get, or whatever, or =
by hand, for that matter.

Thanks for the reference to `autopoint'.  I've used `gettext' but I don't =
remember using `autopoint'.  Maybe I just forgot.  I remember having heard=
 of autogen.sh.  I've never used it for my own software and I like to know=
 the individual steps of how to build a package.

No matter how common the "common lore" is, someone's going to not have hea=
rd of it.  I first started using various commercial versions of Unix in 19=
91 and GNU/Linux around 2003.  It's too bad, in a way, but I've never felt=
 that I was part of a "band".

> Gesendet: Samstag, 09. April 2022 um 03:01 Uhr
> Von: "Jose A. Ortega Ruiz" <[email protected]>
> An: "Laurence Finston" <[email protected]>
> Cc: [email protected]
> Betreff: Re: Installation:  Manual text
>
> On Tue, Apr 05 2022, Laurence Finston wrote:
>
> [...]
>
> > I haven't checked this, but apart from being able to install in, e.g.,
> > /usr/bin, I can't imagine there would be any need for `root'
> > permissions with respect to MDK.
>
> The default would actually be /usr/local/bin, if i recall correctly, and
> no, none of the MDK utilities need root permission to run; but by
> putting them in /usr/local/bin or /usr/bin we're not making them run
> with root permissions, just making them easily available by default to
> all users in the machine (they'll still run with the permissions of the
> user invoking them).  But a note in the docs won't hurt anyone, of
> course (it's just again that two decades ago those things were "common
> lore" to the much smaller band of gnu/linux aficionados :)).
>
> Cheers,
> jao
> --
> Don't be yourself. Be someone a little nicer.
>   -Mignon McLaughlin, journalist and author (1913-1983)
>