PATH does not include /usr/local/bin and /usr/local/sbin

I dislike the idea that packaging-owned files are being placed in /usr/local/ -- this has historically been entirely uncontrolled by all distros and left for administrators to do as they wish.

We don't want to overwrite local changes. We should use snap-specific paths when the more customary /bin /sbin /usr/bin /usr/sbin aren't appropriate.

Thanks

@seth: note that this is a path inside the readonly core and that we need to override the identical xdg-open in /usr/bin if apps ship it inside the snap. this is a script to actually call the xdg-open of the host system outside of the core snap. if you have any better idea regarding the binaries the core snap ships in /usr/local without additionally needing to mangle the host path (there are others) we'll happily implement them.

this will be fixed in snap-confine

Thanks Ogra, I guess I'm just getting very confused about the number of permutations that are under discussion:

- We want snapd and snaps to run on 14.04 LTS, 16.04 LTS, 16.10, Arch, Fedora, etc
- We want snapd and snaps to run on Ubuntu Core 16

Some of these systems exist because snapd exists. In these cases a /usr/local/bin/xdg-open is perfectly fine. There's no admin who might have put something else there and no one is going to be looking under the hood.

On some of these systems, snapd is one way to try to get something done. It might be the most important thing on the system or a user may install it for ten minutes to find out if it solves a problem. We shouldn't be writing into /usr/local/ on these systems.

So, I guess that's the crux of my comment -- if this file may go onto a system that is 'traditional' in any sense of the word, then a new location would be nice. If this file will only exist on the newer IOT-style devices then it doesn't really matter.

Thanks

@setth: how would that file get ever out of the readonly squashfs file to land in the actual /usr/local ? it does get cretaed during the build of the core snap by the core build scripts and does not come with any package anyone could install on either distro:
...
echo "I: Creating xdg helper"

PREFIX=binary/boot/filesystem.dir

mkdir -p $PREFIX/usr/local/bin
cat >$PREFIX/usr/local/bin/xdg-open <<EOF
#!/bin/sh
dbus-send --print-reply --session --dest=com.canonical.SafeLauncher / com.canonical.SafeLauncher.OpenURL string:"\$1"
EOF
chmod 755 $PREFIX/usr/local/bin/xdg-open
...