Adding ~/.local/bin to default PATH

[David Sommerseth]

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On 27/07/11 16:24, Miloslav Trmač wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 27, 2011 at 4:13 PM, Lennart Poettering
> <mzerqung at 0pointer.de> wrote:
>> On Wed, 27.07.11 16:05, Miloslav Trmač (mitr at volny.cz) wrote:
>>> On Wed, Jul 27, 2011 at 4:01 PM, Lennart Poettering
[...snip...]
>> d) there is point in having a standardized dir for this
> *shrug* Anyone knowledgeable enough to install software in $HOME is
> able to configure $PATH, and with some probability has strong opinions
> on where the $prefix should be.

Agreed that having standards is great.  Unfortunately, it so often seems
that everyone wants their own standards.

>> hence: let's just change the xdg basedir spec to standardize it.
> IMHO the ~/.local/bin place is a mistake, and it's still not too late
> to stop making this mistake irreversible.

I'm torn.  I've been using ~/bin for over a decade already, which is
probably why I don't like ~/.local/bin.

I also don't like the fact that an application can easily install
scripts/binaries into a directory I will most likely forget to check - and
have this in my path.  I do know exactly which files I have in ~/bin - I
know so because I placed them there.  However, my workaround will most
likely be:

	mv ~/bin/* ~/.local/bin
	ln -fs ~/.local/bin ~/bin
	restorecon ~/.local/bin

But I'm far from convinced ~/.local/bin is clever.  So far I've only seen
"oh this is nice to have!" arguments.  I haven't seen anything which brings
the strong "need to have" argument.

However, I find ~/.local an odd name.  To whom or what is it 'local'?  If
you have home directories mounted via NFS and log into two different remote
hosts via SSH - the only base is "local" to, is the user.  But if you start
a program which is installed on server but lacks global libraries on the
other server, then this program is suddenly "local" to a particular server
in addition.  My point is that "local" is very ambiguous and its name is
poorly chosen.  But I realise it's way too late to change "~/.local" to
anything now.

And this leads to why I'd like to see a much broader discussion on the
topic about ~/.local/bin, also bringing it outside of Fedora's core.

Lets rather move forward with more caution.


kind regards,

David Sommerseth
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