On Fri, Oct 29, 2004 at 10:14:08AM +0200, martin f krafft wrote:
Come on! The FHS regulates what normal software can/should do,
partially so that package managers can work reliably. dpkg is the
package manager, thus it is exempt from the FHS.
In fact, I should have been even clearer. The FHS applies to the
filesystem structure are run-time, not at installation time. It
guides the installation, but only such that when the installation
phase is complete, the system can switch to run-time and be
FHS-compliant from the start onwards.
That's not quite true -- dpkg can't stick stuff in /debian-rocks/bin and
claim to be FHS compliant. The key point is the distinction between who
is controlling the file, and what it's for: the vendor (us) puts stuff
in /usr, the admin puts software in /usr/local, and programs put their
data in /var, ~, or /srv, depending on what sort of data it is (internal,
personal work, or shared work).
Having apt-spy dpkg-divert the file in /usr on install, and replace it
with a symlink to a file in /var/lib, and then update the file in /var/lib
when invoked seems the obviously correct way to deal with this, no?