Re: Bug#364319: base-files: PS1 setting for *ksh (PROPOSAL: /etc/profile.d/)
| On Sun, 23 Apr 2006, Jari Aalto wrote:
|
| > | Please note that policy says:
| > |
| > | A program must not depend on environment variables to get reasonable
| > | defaults.
| > |
| > | The way I read this, whatever "good" defaults you think should be in
| > | /etc/profile, should be instead coded in the shells themselves
| > | as a default when no PS1 is set at all.
| >
| > The quote has no relevance in this point, because program's behavior
| > is not dependent on it.
|
| Yes, it is relevant. We are using the PS1 environment variable to get
| a reasonable default for the prompt. If we followed policy, we should
| not be setting the environment variable PS1 so that bash gets a good
| default for the prompt. Same for any other shell.
|
| So, instead of breaking policy even more (by adding more defaults to
| override the shell's internal "bad" defaults), we should be thinking
| about following policy closer, which means removing PS1 settings
| completely from /etc/profile in the long run.
|
I feel that the current /etc/profile or the future (if that plan is
commenced) /etc/profile does not do any service whatsoever since it
does not improve the situation.
The policy's purpose should not to hinder development but guide it to
sensible direction that serves the Debian community, the end users.
What we need and what should have been done a long time ago, is to
modularize profile to /etc/profile.d/ where each program is resposible
for shipping reasonable defaults. Redhad has done this long time and
Cygwin does that too and it works very well.
This way all the other issues concerning configuration would be nicely
modularized. There would certainly be several packages that would
benefit from /etc/profile.d/
Jari
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