Re: Beginner in Mac OS X, and ADA and gtkAda: $prefix, and what bin, and home is usr/bob or OSX Users/bob

[Georg Bauhaus <nonlegitur@futureapps.invalid>]

Dennis Lee Bieber <wlfraed@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
> On Mon, 11 Sep 2017 16:17:51 -0700 (PDT), Mace Ayres <mace.ayres@gmail.com>
> declaimed the following:
> 
>> Sorry for some beginner's questions, but.
>> 
>> New to Mac OSX. Various software instructions may say home directory; is
>> that OS X  ./USERS/Me
>> or Unix's /usr/me:
>> 
>> Sometime they refer to the bin directory. Which bin?
>> 
>> Some instructions say $prefix .. what prefix is that?
>> 
>> Is this even an understandable question?
> 
> 	None of these questions are applicable to Ada itself -- they are all
> dependent upon the operating system in use, so the answer is really in the
> OS documentation or guide books.
> 
> 	However...
> 
> Linux (UNIX) home directory is normally
> 		/home/{username}
> and often accessible using ~
> 
> wulfraed@stretch:~$ cd ~
> wulfraed@stretch:~$ pwd
> /home/wulfraed
> wulfraed@stretch:~$ 
> 
> 	I do not know how Mac handles paths. 

MacOS is mostly a BSD Unix with a different kernel,
a different graphics system and some frameworks added
to support these.

$ echo $HOME

in a terminal window will show where the home
directory is.



> /usr is NOT a home directory! It is a location where non-OS applications
> tend to be installed...
> 

Unix System Resources is abbreviated to become
"usr".

The directory has programs that are
(a) installed with Unix itself, typically command line
   utilities 
(b) could be shared by several local machines in a
   traditional Unix network installation 

$ man hier 

in a terminal window should explain the file system 
hierarchy.


> 
> 	"$prefix"		means the value of the environment variable "prefix"

It usually refers to a path setting in a configuration 
file used in compiling a larger program.