Paul W. Frields wrote:
On Mon, Jul 13, 2009 at 02:08:55PM +0200, Ondřej Vašík wrote:
Stefan Assmann wrote:
Hi all,
I was wondering why there's no $HOME/bin directory and $HOME/bin not mentioned in the $PATH variable. Any particular reason not to have that by default?
$HOME/bin is not on every system and the other default directories in default PATH are(at least on the most of systems ;) ). However, some Linux distros do add something as: # set PATH so it includes user's private bin if it exists if [ -d "$HOME/bin" ] ; then PATH="$HOME/bin:$PATH" fi as default - so this dir gets added automatically when does exist. I'm generally +1 for changing the default that way - as it would not change anything for users without that directory.
I would only want this at the *end* of the current PATH, not the beginning, for obvious security reasons.
1. Your practice to a wide extend defeats one prime rationale for ~/bin: Replacing/Overriding vendor-provided applications by per-user installed versions.
2. Unless using ~/bin as root, these files are user-installed binaries, which under normal circumstances may only have security impacts on user files => What you call "obvious security reasons" are minor concerns.
The only real issue you are solving by appending ~/bin instead of prepending ~/bin to $PATH is avoiding application-name conflicts.