Where are Mac OS X 3rd-party apps installed?

My port of an open source Unix/Linux USB/Serial app to Mac OS X seems
to be operating fine (thanks to help from David Phillip Oster).

I'm now trying to fix up the installation script, but don't know
where 3rd-party apps are traditionally or usually stored under Mac OS X.
(I don't personally have any famililiarity with or access to a Mac, and
the user I worked with for the port is a newbie.)

I'd appreciate knowing where best to install:
Executable binaries.
Man pages.
Other stuff like doc files and example scripts.

(The typical user would preferably not have to modify his/her PATH or
MANPATH.)

Some other questions:

Is there a "default" shell configured for the user with Mac OS X or
is the choice of shell completely left up to the user?

Are the environment variables HOME and SHELL usually
set automatically by the OS X initialization scripts? If not,
where would one normally set them?

Many thanks for your help.

Regards,
Charles Sullivan

In article <rr.com>,
Charles Sullivan <rr.com> wrote:
 

Whereever the user wants them, usually /Applications or ~/Applications.
Generally, you would ask the user in your installer, and default to
/Applications.

However, this is only sensible for GUI apps. Below you mention man pages,
though, so maybe yours is not a GUI app? Command line programs generally live in
/usr/local/bin.
 

Unfortunately, the only directories in PATH and MANPATH can be clobbered by the
OS installer. As a result, you should be prepared for your app to vanish after
an OS upgrade, or you should not rely on the default PATH and MANPATH (I
recommend the latter).
 

The default shell is tcsh in Mac OS X 10.2 and older and bash in Mac OS X 10.3
 

I believe that those two are set by the login process and available in all
processes by default.

hth

meeroh

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On Tue, 02 Mar 2004 00:10:47 -0500, Miro Jurisic wrote:
 
>
> Whereever the user wants them, usually /Applications or ~/Applications.
> Generally, you would ask the user in your installer, and default to
> /Applications.
>
> However, this is only sensible for GUI apps. Below you mention man pages,
> though, so maybe yours is not a GUI app? Command line programs generally
> live in /usr/local/bin.
> 
>
> Unfortunately, the only directories in PATH and MANPATH can be clobbered
> by the OS installer. As a result, you should be prepared for your app to
> vanish after an OS upgrade, or you should not rely on the default PATH and
> MANPATH (I recommend the latter).
> 
>
> The default shell is tcsh in Mac OS X 10.2 and older and bash in Mac OS X
> 10.3
> 
>
> I believe that those two are set by the login process and available in all
> processes by default.
>
> hth
>
> meeroh[/ref]

Oops, I should have specified this was a command line program. Luckily
you were able to infer that.

The existing installer for this software already puts the executable
and man pages in /usr/local/bin and /user/local/man, so I'm going to
take your excellent advice and just have the user tweak the path.

Many thanks for your help Miro.

Regards,
Charles Sullivan