GNU bug report logs - #21400
Location of "file" is hard coded

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From: John Frankish <john.frankish <at> outlook.com>
To: <21400 <at> debbugs.gnu.org>
Cc: 'Peter Rosin' <peda <at> lysator.liu.se>
Subject: bug#21400: Location of "file" is hard coded
Date: Thu, 3 Sep 2015 20:06:17 +0400

> > > I had a quick look, and AFAICT, all uses of hardcoded /usr/bin/file 
> > > are in system-specific code paths.
> > > So, you must have the file utility in an odd location for your type 
> > > of system
> > > (and /usr/local/bin seems a bit odd for a basic utility such as file).
> > 
> > This distro (tinycorelinux) works on the basis that anything not in 
> > the base release should be compiled to /usr/local, which I believe was 
> > the original idea of /usr/local.
> > 
> > As can be seen from above, the configure script finds strip, ranlib 
> > and nm in /usr/local so it would be kind of logical that it could find 
> > file in the same place, no?
>
>  I always thought that /usr/local was for stuff built locally by the local
admin.
> FHS agrees with me, AFAICT.
> 
> > Are you saying that tinycorelinux puts optional (non-base) packages in
/usr/local?

Yes :)

> Seems like a very bad call to me, diverging from every other distro and
unix history is painful,
> to put it plainly. Not even Gentoo goes as far as putting stuff in
/usr/local,
> even if everything really is built by the local admin.
> Where is the local admin supposed to put locally built stuff in
tinycorelinux,
> if /usr/local is cluttered with optional distro packages?

If the app doesn't exist, the local admin compiles it to /usr/local and
submits it to the online repo it so everybody can use it.

> And, I refuse to think that tinycorelinux does not, at least optionally,
offer a GNU file package,
> so I would suggest that you install that package and move on
> (it's not like Libtool depends on any state-of-the-art option that is only
available since file
> version x.y). If 'file' ends up under /usr/local when you do that, switch
to a sane distro instead.

Tinycorelinux does offer a GNU file package, which is compiled to
/usr/local.

Of course it's entirely up to you whether to ignore this or not, but as said
previously, it does not  seem logical to search $PATH for items like strip,
ranlib and nm, but not for file.

John

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