Re: GNUstep directory layout

[Richard Frith-Macdonald]

On Sunday, September 8, 2002, at 11:11 AM, Dennis Leeuw wrote:

> Richard Frith-Macdonald wrote:
>
> > On Saturday, September 7, 2002, at 02:27 PM, Tim Harrison wrote:
> >
> > > Dennis Leeuw wrote:
> > >
> > > > /Network/<server-name>/System
> > > > /Network/<server-name>/Local
> > > > /Network/<server-name>/Users
> > >
> > > This is something that I'm still unsure of.  I know Martin has some
> > > suggestions about the management of /Network.  My personal jury is
> > > still out on this one.  I'm going to have a look at all the
> > > suggestions, and see what I can come up with.  In the meantime, I'm
> > > going to leave it as it is.  No harm, no foul.
> >
> > That's not the way Network was meant to be used as I understood it.
> >
> > The idea of the Network domain is to be used to store stuff that's
> > supposed to be available
> > to all machines on the network ... enabling rapid deployment of client
> > machines (ie a single
> > server exports this directory using NFS etc, and all client machines
> > mount it).
> > The layout of subdirectories within Network should therefore mirror the
> > layout of directories
> > in System.
>
> I looked it up to be sure, but the NeXT Network and System 
> Administration
> book says for e.g. Chapter 7 Creating Network-Wide User Accounts:
> <snip>
> Modify the Home Directory field fo the new account
> <snap>
> for example, would be /Net/server/Users/meggers
> <snop>
>
> Somewhere I must have a document that describes the NeXT tree in more
> detail, but I can't find it. (Does that mean I need to clean up the mess
> around me?)
> The /Network path is used for mounting network shares on a per host 
> path.
> But that doesn't mean we have to stick to that.

I'm referring to the location described by the GNUSTEP_NETWORK_ROOT
environment variable, which was introduced as a place to store 
applications
and resources provided on client machines by a network server.  
Traditionally
this location has defaulted to /usr/GNUstep/Network

This has nothing to do with the /Net directory in NeXTstep, where peer 
machines
(and the local host) available on the network are to be found.

The /Net directory is irrelevant to the GNUstep software ... its 
contents are
not searched for apps to run, and apps running on the local machine don't
use anything from within the /Net directory.  There is therefore no 
particular
point in defining this as part of the GNUstep filesystem structure.

I think that Apple combines the two concepts so that the /Net directory 
from
NeXTstep is now /Network/Servers, but in other respects the Apple setup 
seems
to be the same as the existing GNUstep one (ie the Networks directory 
contains
subdirectories like Applications, Library etc).