I recently had cause to install and configure the Oracle Instant Client under Linux. As I've written before, it is a breeze to get a client up and running.

I did find however that the way the instant client deploys its files can break makefiles and so on if you are doing C/C++ development.

I wrote a simple script (see installInstantClient.sh) to install and cleanup an Instant Client and take care of a few things like:

• move executables into a /bin subdirectory
  
• move libraries into a /lib subdirectory
  
• create links for commonly know library names
  
• create a default network/admin/tnsnames.ora
  
• suggest appropriate environment settings for your .bash_profile
  

Note that the script is written to explicitly handle the basic+sdk+sqlplus installation. If you want to use it for a different combination of kits it will need some simple modification.