Re: /etc/sysconf ? /etc/<somethingelse> ?

[Lars Wirzenius <liw@iki.fi>]

Ian Jackson:
> It's clear to me that we need this directory; it's less clear to me
> what it is called.

I more or less agree about the need.  I don't much care what the name is.
It might be a good idea to include "debian" in it, so that it doesn't
conflict with other systems.  (Some day someone might want to make .deb's
that work with Red Hat, for example.)

We might want to develop some tools for making it easy to read and write
the files in /etc/sysconf.  Most of the files are likely to be simple, but
there's still a need to allow for commenting, line splitting, etc.

Oh, and we probably don't want to move all configuration stuff into
/etc/sysconf.  For example, sendmail's configuration file(s?) should stay
as they are.  But it would be nice for things like the following, I think:

	preferred paper size for this system

	should shell packages add the shell to /etc/shells?
	
	preferred local language for this system (so that not every
	words-package will ask if it should be made the primary one)
	
Essentially, /etc/sysconf should contain stuff that is shared between
packages, cannot easily be deduced from other stuff using standard 
conventions, and should probably often be policy decisions of some kind.

On the other hand, I couldn't think of any other examples than the above
(in addition to the timezone name suggested by Ian).

(I don't think we want a Registry.  No, we already have a Registry.  We
just call it /etc. :)