gEDA-user: installation

[Stuart Brorson]

>> Do not install as root.  If you install as root, and you need to
>> install system-wide dependencies, the installer becomes confused when
>> it tries to fire up an expect session as root.
>
> Now I'm confused. In all these years of working on Unix, I've always
> thought packages need to be installed as root. How else will you keep
> the binaries in a place like /opt or /usr/local where all users of your
> system can access them?

This is almost a religious issue.  In creating the installer I chose
to follow the pre-existing gEDA practice, which is to install by
default somewhere underneath the user's ${HOME} directory.

However, I personally recommend users to install into a new directory,
/usr/local/geda, and then set their $PATH variables to point to it.  I
think the installer will create this new directory, and ask for the
root password if needed.   It's been a while since I looked.....

Anyway, it's best to install into /usr/local/geda (or some similar
system-wide, but independent directory) because if you ever need to
remove your gEDA installation, you can just nuke the whole directory.
If you install into /usr/local, then you've got to rm each and every
gEDA file independently, which is quite a PITA.

More about uninstalling the gEDA Suite is here:

http://geda.seul.org/wiki/geda:gedasuite_installation#how_do_i_uninstall_the_geda_suite

Stuart