[tex-live] Default installation violates filesystem hierarchy standards

[Reinhard Kotucha]

On 2015-09-28 at 04:42:11 +0900, Norbert Preining wrote:

 > > documentation, configuration files, etc.) in a directory
 > > hierarchy rooted at /usr/local/texlive/2015.
 > 
 > Yes, that is the default location, as it has been since many many
 > years (20?)

TeX Live 1 was released in 1996:

   ftp://tug.org/historic/systems/texlive/

So TeX Live will be 20 years old next year and I suppose that the
birthday party takes place at TUG-2016 in Toronto.

Regarding /usr/local vs. /opt, I think that the current state is okay
because

 * the default installation directory is just a default value which
   can be changed easily at install time,

 * the whole texlive tree can be moved/copied to anywhere else at any
   time,

 * most users don't need the latest stuff and are using the TeX Live
   packages provided by their Unix/Linux distribution anyway,

 * many users already have many releases under
   /usr/local/texlive/YYYY/ and expect a new release there too.

There are a few other things to consider.  The /opt directory often
contains stuff maintained by the package manager and thus many people
prefer another directory for whatever they install themselves.  IMO
/usr/local is a good choice.

TeX Live was derived from teTeX and teTeX was released in 1994.  So
the default installation directory is /usr/local for more than
20~years and changing it now sounds very strange to me.

The good news is that nothing is carved into stone and everybody can
tell the installer where to install TeX Live.

Tristan, I understand your point, but I fear that a change causes a
lot of trouble because most users expect the current behavior,
regardless of any standards.

Regards,
  Reinhard

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