Is there a default location for 'linux too applications'

Question

I recently moved to OS X from Windows 7. In Windows, pretty much everything gets installed to C:\Program Files\[application name] or C:\[application name]. In OS X /Applications seems to be roughly equivalent to C:\Program Files for all the consumer apps that I use.

But when it comes to a 'linux too' application (e.g. Python, Postgres, Node JS to name just a few) they seem to get installed all over the place. Only after spending a few minutes guessing and using find did I discover that Postgres executables were installed to /Library/PostgreSQL/9.1/bin/, v8 and Node were in /usr/local/bin. Often times these differ to the equivalent paths that I see Linux users refer to.

Is there a better way to discover where my apps are being installed than by having to use find each time? Shouldn't I be able to predict it with rules of thumb something like 'all database apps should go in /Library' so that's where I know to look for postgres, and 'all compilers and languages go in /usr/local/bin' so that's where I know to look for v8 after it's installed?

Answer 1

The short answer is, unfortunately, no there isn't a default location.

But it's not complete chaos.

For command line tools that ship with the OS or get brought in by Apple-supplied applications like Xcode, you'll find it all in /usr/bin. That includes things like the OS X default Python and Perl as well as the Xcode-supplied gcc, clang, make and the other command line developer tools Xcode installs.

For non-Apple command line tools, if the application is well-behaved, it should put them in /usr/local/bin.

Some .app packaged applications that install under /Applications offer command line tools (for example subl offered by Sublime Text 2). If I want to use these from the command line I'll generally make a symlink from /usr/local/bin to the tool under the .app file for the application rather than put the application-specific path on my PATH environment variable.

If you use a package manager like Homebrew to install and manage your command line tools then it's not too much of a hardship to make /usr/local/bin the place for everything you use. Homebrew does a very nice job of keeping it neat and clean and all in one place for you. I can't speak to how well MacPorts or Fink keep things contained under one sub-tree like this.

The exception to the rules are OS X-default daemons like Postgres and such. Those can get scattered and there really isn't a very good way to track them down aside from find and maybe mdfind from the command line.