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Re: /usr vs. root was: /etc /usr/etc



Manoj Srivastava writes:
 > Vadim> The division goes like this: if the program puts its config
 > Vadim> files in /usr, they must go into /usr/etc; if the program puts
 > Vadim> its conffiles on the root partition, they must go to /etc.
 > 
 > 	So, we decide on placing files dependeing on where the
 >  upstream sources put their files? This does not sound like a sound
 >  technical policy to me. Remember, most authors do not write with
 >  Debian's file system discipline in mind. 

Nobody said we would keep the upstream source location...

 > >> I think that a major flaw in this proposal is that the division of
 > >> conf files into machine local and site wide depends on the site it
 > >> self (is emacs configuration site wide? No, since only the doc guys
 > >> want to spend time setting up auctexand sgml.
 > 
 > Vadim> You have user's .emacs for it.  It must depend on the user, not
 > Vadim> on the machine one is working on.
 > 
 > 	No, I have 500 people on the documentation group and we all
 >  use machines XXA to XXZ. I don't want all 500 to continue making
 >  changes as the requirements of the group change. On the other hand,
 >  the 15,000 developers do not want auctex on the system. Not site
 >  wide, but a section of the site. The only solution that worked for us
 >  (make thet secretaries and undergrads) was rdist, not second guessing
 >  the local configuration.

This would be addressed by either of my solutions using a path. Let's
say XXA to XXZ are group 'auctex', the confpath would be
/etc:/usr/groups/auctex/etc:/usr/etc, or similar.

Surely it doesn't handle all possible overlapping groups settings;
solution "3.b", namely the "file inheritance scheme for directories"
hypothetical ext2fs hack would even restrict us to
hierarchically-structured groups.

But it's still better than nothing, and maybe sufficient.

-- 
Yann Dirson <dirson@univ-mlv.fr>
http://monge.univ-mlv.fr/~dirson


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