Package

A package is a collection of files. Then, a package manager takes care of its installation, with a well defined set of rules to place the files into the correct place within the system.

Package manager

Using Debian based systems, the package manager is:

apt --version

To understand the specific files/changes made by apt, you can use the dpkg command (debian packages only), which is the underlying package management tool that apt utilizes. The dpkg command allows you to query information about installed packages, including their files, configuration details, and more.

dpkg -L <package_name>

Install software without the help of the package manager

Once you have obtained a software without using the package manager (i.g. downloading a pre-build version of it or after having built it ), you have to decide where to store the artifacts (binaries and libraries). A plausible option is to organize the files in the /opt directory and then provide a symbolic link into an executable path or library path such as /usr/local/... (directory location used to store manually built binaries[/usr/local/bin]/library[/usr/local/lib]).

In the following snippet, the HDFView programme is placed and linkd in the above mentioned location.

# HDFView is a directory structure containing binaries
sudo mv HDFView /opt
sudo ln -s "/opt/HDFView/bin/HDFView" /usr/local/bin/HDFView