Bug#410903: xkb-data: configuration files have been moved to /usr/share
Package: xkb-data
Version: 0.9-4
Severity: serious
After upgrading to etch, I noticed that it is no longer possible to use
locally adapted keyboard layouts. The reason is that the contents of
/etc/X11/xkb/ have been moved to /usr/share, and files at the old
location are no longer used.
I think that it is clear that these files actually are configuration
files. This has been discussed for example in #326637. Reading through
this bug, one gets the impression that everyone who spoke up agreed that
it makes sense, and is actually done, to customize these files (or maybe
rather, to add customization files in these directories, see below).
However, the bug was closed with "XKB files have been moved into
/usr/share/X11/xkb, so I am closing this bug". I guess this might be
because Debian simply followed an upstream change. Which is an
explanation, but not a good reason.
What is the consequence of this bug?
- In my case, it is that my old setup stopped producing my customized
keyboard layout because the files that I added in /etc/ were not
found. I fear this will happen to quite a lot of people upgrading
from older versions (both sarge and xorg on sarge-backports).
- In extreme cases, it might have the consequence that people are not
able to log in, because some keys they need for their username or
password are not available with the resulting keyboard layout. (And
the keyboard layout on the console might never have provided them).
- Well, and generally it's a policy violation to ship configuration
files in /usr/share.
What are possible approaches to solve this bug?
1) move (most of) xkb-data's files back to /etc.
The problem here is that if sarge's dpkg is used, this will lead to
loads of "created by you or a script" messages. Which can be
circumvented by either a "Pre-Depends: dpkg (>=1.1321)" (something
you want to avoid) or by removing files with matching md5sums in
/var/lib/dpkg/info. Unfortunately, the second approach leads to
"conffile has been deleted" prompts when etch's dpkg is used (see
#346282).
2) State that
- the files in /usr/share/X11/xkb/ represent particular
configuration choices, selected by settings in xorg.conf, and are not
meant to be configured,
but that
- it must be possible to *add* new layouts locally.
In terms of implementation, this would mean that some tool would have
to merge the contents of /usr/share/X11/xkb and *new* files in
/etc/X11/xkb, and that the executable needs to be changed to load
them from the merging place.
3) State that the files in /usr/share/X11/xkb/ represent particular
configuration choices, selected by settings in xorg.conf, and are not
meant to be configured, not at all, not even by addition.
IMHO, this would only be acceptable if
a) it is possible to do single key reassignments in xorg.conf (or at
other places, like setxkbmap calls in /etc/X11/Xsession{,.d}),
and
b) there's a really user-oriented documentation about how to do that,
if not an upgrade path.
With user-oriented I mean that at least anyone who, years ago, was
able to change one of the lines in, say, /etc/X11/xkb/symbols/pc/us,
to suit their needs, will be guided to achieve a similar effect with
xorg.conf. README.config.gz is not sufficient, since it doesn't talk
at all about key remappings, only choosing between existing options.
Ideally even someone who got the changed file from a friend would be
able to do it.
4) State that I am talking rubish^W^W^W^W^W^W not included here.
Regards, Frank
-- System Information:
Debian Release: 4.0
APT prefers testing
APT policy: (500, 'testing'), (99, 'unstable')
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash
Kernel: Linux 2.6.18-3-686
Locale: LANG=de_DE@euro, LC_CTYPE=de_DE@euro (charmap=ISO-8859-15)
-- no debconf information
--
Dr. Frank Küster
Single Molecule Spectroscopy, Protein Folding @ Inst. f. Biochemie, Univ. Zürich
Debian Developer (teTeX/TeXLive)
Reply to: