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My /usr/bin/vlc binary was broken after installing vlc from source into /usr/local prefix. Based on my experience installations into /usr/local didn't affect binaries /usr/bin/[binary], but maybe that was just by accident.

Afaik the effect of a /usr/local installation might be (unstable) shared libraries which are loaded from there before the (stable) ones from /usr/. So, does Ubuntu force package maintainers to load dynamic libraries from /usr/ only?

Resources like hier manpage, BLSF position on /usr/local vs /usr and FHS explanation of Debian answers this question imo since it doesn't define interoperability between binaries in different prefixes.

This is not about the functioning of path lookup priorities (for binaries, shared libraries, ...) which is quite clear for me, but about their usage (constraints, definitions, (pseudo)-standards) in Ubuntu.

Kalle Richter
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Based on my experience installations into /usr/local didn't affect binaries /usr/bin/[binary], but maybe that was just by accident.

You should hang out around Ask Ubuntu more often. :)

Using sudo pip install, which installs to /usr/local, breaking various Python applications is IME by far the most common Python problem I have seen here. If you installed a PyPi package that already had a system package present, it could break whatever was using the system package. Just a few weeks ago I had apt-get-installed certbot break due to a pip-installed certbot plugin.

Packages aren't supposed to officially install anything in /usr/local (exceptions like CA certificates, aside), since that is the system administrator's domain - but that's the only restriction. Clearly if the system administrator is to make full use of the power that /usr/local provides, then things elsewhere in /usr must be able to be affected them. It's not so much that they're "allowed to be broken" by source install; it's more that the system administrator is trusted to know what effects their installing things in /usr/local will have.

muru
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