From: Eric Christopherson Date: 2011-06-06T10:36:59+09:00 Subject: Re: Changes for Ruby in Debian (and Ubuntu) On Sun, Jun 5, 2011 at 7:24 PM, Iņaki Baz Castillo wrote: > 2011/5/25 Eric Christopherson : >> Do the other files belonging to gems still get installed under /var? > > I've never understood why libraries should be installed under /var > directory. /usr/lib/ exists for that: for storing libraries. /var si > supposed to contain dynamic content (cache files, logs, mails, PID > files, daemons sockets, and so no, but not libraries). As I understand it, they're not in /usr/bin because they're not installed by the package manager. That much I can agree with. But I would put them in /usr/local. I guess the rationale is that /var is, by definition, a location that is writeable, and gem installation writes files, so they go there. I'm not sure how many gems actually modify their files once they're installed; I would guess not many. It may be a prejudice or misconception on my part, but I'm used to thinking of /var as containing stuff I don't really need to worry about backing up. I guess that doesn't necessarily conflict with gems though, since they can usually be reinstalled after a recovery; but that's true of .deb packages too, so I dunno.