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I have to disagree completely with this
Authored by: Palijn on Sep 21, '02 03:02:20PM

As many Unix admins know it for years, the most you can separate your data on different partitions/disks, the safer you are in the event of a system failure or something.

The easy way to do this without messing up users with totally indecent paths (like "don't look at your usual /usr/local/bin, it's now /s/dev1/part1/fs3/nolocal/nonfs/bin" !) is by using SYMBOLIC LINKS .
That way, when you navigate through your usual path, you end up finding what you've expected to.

Fortunately, Apple's HFS+ supports symbolic links. Mac OS X supports both aliases (pre-OS X style) and symbolic links : fine!

UNfortunately, the actual Software Update application doesn't behave smoothly, and decides that if it encounters a symbolic link , it must be destroyed and replaced by a plain folder.

This leads to the situation where, for the sake of ONE set of apps (software update, installer) we, as users and owner of our boxes, cannot properly administer them without headaches.

This, IMHO, has to be filed as a bug, and I won't adapt myself around this type of ugly things. Because it's easy to fix.
If you do want to keep all your stuff in a directory controlled by the maker of your OS, then please go to Windows. Everything is messy under C:\Windows and you don't have the right to touch it or the system will fail.
I would'nt buy Apple if they go this way backwards...



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