5 ms·

i don't see a difference between /opt and /usr/local , I just think it's a matter of preference

• sant0sk1 17y ago
  The difference is stuff installed in /opt is encapsulated inside its own folder, whereas everything in /usr/local is shared (one bin dir, one lib dir, etc). So if I want to uninstall Ruby from /opt I do something like this: rm -rf /opt/ruby-1.8.7 To uninstall Ruby from /usr/local is a lot more work.
  • nudded 17y ago
    you could actually do the same in /usr/local. all you need to do is install all packages to their own folder (eg /usr/local/custom/ruby-1.8.7) and then symlink the binary to /usr/local/bin. http://github.com/mxcl/homebrew/tree/ http://github.com/mxcl/homebrew/tree/ is a package manager that tries to do just that
    • tsally 17y ago
      Seems like you might as well do it in opt then, since it is far less common to encapsulate things in folders in local.
    • sant0sk1 17y ago
      Sure you could do something like that, but the OP did not suggest such a practice.
  • pohl 17y ago
    I've often wondered about the difference between /usr/local and /opt. Thank you for posting this.