Re: profile.d [was Re: UMASK 002 or 022?]
#include <hallo.h>
Brian Mays wrote on Thu Jun 08, 2000 um 12:42:22PM:
> Applications may rely on environment variables to *customize*; however,
> it is a violation of Debian policy for applications to require
> environment variables to work. If you had been around for the previous
I though, it has been only the customisation which is discussed in this
thread.
> Customization is the job of the local system administrator, who should
> have no trouble editing /etc/profile.
But it's trouble for beginners that don't know how to set variables and
aliases. For these people there is no real help in Debian and it's also
forbidden to modify /etc/profile, no matter if it's explicitly wished by
the user/admin or not.
> > How is MANATH different from CVSROOT? What's the problem with setting
Setting MANPATH is nonsense, it's presence disturb other mechnisms. But
CVSROOT is customisation only, like LESSOPEN, LESSCLOSE, various
ls-aliases etc.
> Packages should not *need* to set environment variables. All
> applications in a package should work correctly, by default, without
They don't need this, but it would make Debian more useable if some of
them are set to better values than defaults! So why not allow some
packages to modify the environment?
I think, a better idea were to write shell-wrappers around the programs
which need this (as it's already done by many packages), and put small
"include" files in /etc/default (or another directory), so they can be
modified easily by admin or debconf and are sourc'ed by the
wrapper-scripts later. But it were a solution which I personaly don't
like and I would prefer setting of the common environment instead.
> requiring *any* environment variables to be set. Therefore, no package
> should need to set an environment variable.
Once again: the packages don't depend on this variables, but the may
--
=====================================================================
Eduard Bloch <eb@zombie.inka.de>; HP: http://eduard.bloch.com/edecosi
0xEDF008C5(GnuPG): E6EB 98E2 B885 8FF0 6C04 5C1D E106 481E EDF0 08C5
:wq
Reply to: