Victor Nazarov
This tradition of global and /usr/local for ./configure scripts is ok, but for a convenient package manager it's not necessarily ideal.
Well, the system package manager uses /usr. But for locally compiled software, I don't see any good alternative to /usr/local. It is certainly what I'd expect, based on most other build systems I've used. Also, it's the default location for some non-cabalized packages.
Ubuntu/Debian policy seems to be installation into /var/lib/cabal .
Since when? I have a ton of stuff installed via apt-get, and I don't even have this directory. The policy is that everything from the repositories (i.e. .deb packages) get installed under /usr.
So it's clear that the whole hierarchy is managed by single tool cabal. Drawback is that you should add /var/lib/cabal/bin into your PATH.
Some systems used /opt in more or less this way. -k -- If I haven't seen further, it is by standing in the footprints of giants