Re: GNU-specific paths on paths.h

[Robert Millan]

On Sat, Oct 05, 2002 at 03:35:19PM +0200, Alfred M. Szmidt wrote:
> Robert Millan <address@hidden> writes:
> > It seems that the generic paths.h is not suitable for the GNU system
> > because it contains paths with /usr and other directories that are not
> > present in any of its distributions (as Debian GNU/Hurd)
> 
> Why is it not suitable for GNU/Hurd? We have a /usr (it is an link to
> /).  Most (none?) GNU/Linux system don't have the /usr/old/bin and
> /usr/contrib/bin path either.  And it doesn't hurt to have them in
> there either.

>From paths.h:

/* Default search path. */
#define _PATH_DEFPATH   "/usr/bin:/bin"
/* All standard utilities path. */
#define _PATH_STDPATH \
        "/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin"

Problems for both GNU and GNU/Linux:

- _PATH_STDPATH is for normal users where /sbin is not needed
- _PATH_*PATH_ROOT are for root (and should include /sbin) but
are not defined here (see the coreutils' su sources)
- _PATH_STDPATH does not include directories that are in PATH
by default on most systems, and most users would expect:
[/usr]/local, [/usr]/X11 and [/usr]/games

Additional (minor) problem specific to GNU/Hurd:

- we don't have /usr, thus we don't need it in PATH. the
Linux-specific paths.h has its own customisations like
_PATH_KLOG, _PATH_UNIX, etc so i don't see why we can't
get rid of /usr for GNU/Hurd

cheers,

-- 
Robert Millan

"5 years from now everyone will be running
free GNU on their 200 MIPS, 64M SPARCstation-5"

              Andrew S. Tanenbaum, 30 Jan 1992