[ale] best place to untar/unzip a file?

[Greg Sabino Mullane]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

> Where is the "proper" (for lack of a better word) place to 
> untar or unzip an archive?

I have a special directory for programs I download and install, 
named "download" in root's home directory. It has a "gz" 
subdirectory, and this is what I do:

(search the net, find the file I need...)
cd ~/download/gz
wget http://somereallycoolutilityIcannotlivewithout.tar.gz
wget http://somereallycoolutilityIcannotlivewithout.tar.gz.sign
gpg --verify somereallycoolutilityIcannotlivewithout.tar.gz.sign
cd ..
tar xvfz gz/somereallycoolutilityIcannotlivewithout.tar.gz
cd SRCUICLW_1.0 (or whatever was created)
/configure
make
make check
make install
(test new program out a bit)
cd ..
/bin/rm -fr SRCUICLW_1.0
(test again)

It doesn't matter too much where you unzip them, but I would 
recommend making a standard place to store all the files you 
download. I'd also recommend removing that directory right 
away so you don't have any surprises when /tmp gets cleaned 
out and something (erroneously) tries to reference it. After all, 
if you have the original tar.[gz|bz2], there is no real need 
to save the archive. (Of course, you should always record any 
specific configure flags or other problems that come up so 
you can easily duplicate your installation later)

YMMV,
Greg Sabino Mullane
greg at turnstep.com
PGP Key: 0x14964AC8 200111200954

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Comment: http://www.turnstep.com/pgp.html

iQA/AwUBO/pvz7ybkGcUlkrIEQI7BACg3UKl4vYFFBArrSZqZf/OYvX31EUAoNIm
RiDoW4NFzSldh8PQi37KVMxK
=HRuO
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


---
This message has been sent through the ALE general discussion list.
See http://www.ale.org/mailing-lists.shtml for more info. Problems should be 
sent to listmaster at ale dot org.