Directory for executable files

[Tom H]

On Tue, May 21, 2019 at 2:07 AM Phil <phillor9 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Thank you for reading this.
>
> In the past, programmes that needed to be built were downloaded
> into /usr/local/src and once "configure" and "make" were run an
> executable file would end up in /usr/local/bin. I don't often need
> to build a file with "make" and instead many of the programmes that
> I've downloaded, often to take advantage of the latest version, are
> downloaded in a zip file that contains an executable file.
>
> Once extracted the executable file, along with many other files,
> ends up in ~/Downloads/programme_name but of course that directory
> is not in $Path. "Application Launcher" takes care of that problem
> but I think there must be a more technically correct method.
>
> I do have ~/.local/bin because that's where "pip" puts the
> executable files. I could link ~/Downloads/programme_name to
> ~/.local/bin and that would allow me to launch an executable file
> from the console. $PATH includes ~/.local/bin.
>
> So, is using the application launch the best method to take care of
> programmes that are not in the path or is there a more technically
> correct and neater method?

Given "along with many other files", I'd do what google-chrome (for
example) does, move "~/Downloads/foodir" to "/opt", and symlink
"/usr/local/bin/foo" to "/opt/foodir/foo".

Otherwise, I'd just move "~/Downloads/foodir/foo" to "/usr/local/bin".

[ Ideally, you'd create a deb, even if it's just with "dpkg-deb" ]