On Wed, May 22, 2002 at 02:37:25PM -0500, Richard Rauch wrote:

> Yes, I meant to mention, e.g., tetex's installation of fonts in /var as
> something that irks me.  Fortunately, my / partition has much more space

I think that it's been the norm for programs likd TeX to use /var for 
generated files like fonts for some time. 

I don't think I would want TeX putting files like that in /usr/pkg,
that would wreck things for me.

I think sometimes that being strict about the /usr/pkg prefix results
in some stupid things happening.  /var is supposed to be for things like
TeX fonts, and shouldn't be in your root either.

I don't like the Windowsian idea of packages using their own
<prefix>/<package> directories for /var type files.  /var is
there for that sort of thing IMHO. 

I know, this is partially a case of "it's always been that way", but I
think there are good reasons for using /var the traditional way.

There are benefits to keep a package's file together, but there are also
benefits to using a common area for variable data as well.

Let's at least talk about the pros and cons before cleaning out /var.

-- 
UNIX/Perl/C/Pizza__________________________________shannon@widomaker.com