[ Removing the Cc for the bug, adding -policy, and setting M-F-T, as this ]
[ is really a policy question. ]
On Mon, Jan 31, 2005 at 11:45:57AM -0500, Joey Hess wrote:
> Matthew Palmer wrote:
> > If I do 'man ls' I can get the semantics for the ls command. No
> > such benefit is provided me by gettext.sh. Hmm, time to report a bug
> > against gettext-base for not having a manual page for gettext.sh...
>
> I realize that you're probaly using that example as a rhetorical device,
> but in fact any widely used shell library _should_ have a man page. For
> debconf I document /usr/share/debconf/confmodule in confmodule(3).
>
> I also think it would be nice if every package that uses debhelper did
> not have to hardcode /usr/share/debconf/confmodule. There are probably
> more such scripts in debian than ones that use gettext.sh. However,
> putting it in any bin directory offends my sense of aesthetics, so I
> didn't. If there had been a /usr/lib/shell or whatever, I'd have
> certianly taken advantage of it. I think that would be a useful addition
> to policy.
Again, I say: this is what libexec is for. If we're going to modify policy
to allow for a place for such things (and I do, actually, think it's a good
idea to have one), we should use the name and location for it that has been
in widespread use for years.
Libexec: things that are nominally part of or intimately tied to
'executable' code, but which aren't shared libraries (/usr/lib).
Shell fragments, etc - stuff that is often currently found in
/usr/share/<package>.
Whether it's /usr/libexec, /usr/share/libexec, or something else is up
for discussion (the only thing that lives in /libexec that I know of, on
any other OS, is the linker that we put in /lib instead); maybe both have
purpose. Whether it should be searched by default in various forms of
paths, and whether anything in it should ever have an exec bit set, are
possible questions (searching it last, if policy says "no exec bits", might
solve the issue of wanting to be able to use, say, ". confmodule" or the
like).
One can also do things like keeping a symlink in /usr/share/<package>,
pointing to /usr/share/libexec, for legacy support/migrations, of course.
--
Joel Aelwyn <fenton@debian.org> ,''`.
: :' :
`. `'
`-
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