document why unix tar install goes into /usr/ instead of /usr/local

[SebastienBarthelemy]

Hello

I installed http://bazaar-vcs.org/releases/src/bzr-0.91.tar.gz (on my ubuntu gutsy) following the explanations from http://bazaar-vcs.org/InstallationFaq:

System-wide install (recommended)
To install systemwide cd into the directory you downloaded Bazaar into and run the following command which will typically install 'bzr' into '/usr/local/bin':
 % sudo python setup.py install

The installation worked, but the files got installed in /usr/bin and not in /usr/local/bin has expected. I would be great to change this behaviour or the webpage explanation.

++

[Aaron Bentley (abentley)]

I don't know if setuptools uses installs into /usr/local on some systems. Certainly my experience on Debian and Ubuntu has been that it consistently uses /usr. In any case, many people will want it in /usr/local, so perhaps we should suggest the --prefix option.

[John A Meinel (jameinel)]

I believe the default python installation is to install wherever *python* is installed. So if you do "python setup.py install" and your python is in /usr/bin/python with libs in /usr/lib/python2.5/ then it will install 'bzr' as /usr/bin/bzr and bzrlib as /usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages/bzrlib.

It almost has to, since I don't think /usr/local/lib/python2.5 is on the default search path for a python installed in /usr/bin.

Users *can* use --prefix, but then they have to set up their PYTHONPATH accordingly.

I think we just need to change the webpage explanation, as I don't think we are going to change python's installation behavior.

[John C Barstow (jbowtie)]

I've updated this page on the wiki - http://wiki.bazaar.canonical.com/InstallationFaq, including a link to the Python documentation of the --prefix option.