Re: from / to /usr/: a summary
Enrico Weigelt wrote:
> * Adam Borowski <kilobyte@angband.pl> schrieb:
> > On Fri, Dec 30, 2011 at 02:47:38PM +0100, Marco d'Itri wrote:
> > > On Dec 30, Carlos Alberto Lopez Perez <clopez@igalia.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > > I think that stephan is right here. Every package using files in /etc
> > > It DOES NOT MATTER who is right, some upstreams have decided otherwise.
> > > At least udev, systemd and next month module-init-tools do override the
> > > configuration files in /usr/lib/ with the configuration files in /etc/.
> > > Deal with it.
> >
> > Then udev and systemd are broken.
> >
> > You're introducing a dangerous inconsistency that's going to bite people.
>
> ACK. Sometimes upstreams doing really stange things (maybe because
> they dont have any package management in mind), that should be fixed.
> If upstream doesnt do those fixes, distros have to catch in.
The numerous upstreams which follow this model introduced it
specifically *because* of distributions and package management, which
they specifically had in mind as a design constraint. The "search path"
behavior, along with the consistent use of .d directories, allows a
clean distinction between upstream configuration, vendor/distribution
configuration (any changes Debian wants to make to the defaults),
sysadmin overrides of the defaults, and sysadmin configuration building
on the defaults, without forcing sysadmins to perform manual three-way
merges every time they upgrade.
The upstream defaults live outside of /etc specifically because *they
don't normally represent configuration intended for the sysadmin to
change*.
Before udev moved the default rules to /lib/udev, udev received a large
number of bug reports caused by an incorrect set of udev rules in /etc.
Sysadmins would make a local hack and then not accept new upstream rule
changes, or packages would delete outdated rules but the conffiles would
stick around and break things, or various other fun and exciting
brokenness. Almost all of those bug reports went away once udev moved
the default location of distro-installed rules to /lib/udev/rules.d
rather than /etc/udev/rules.d.
- Josh Triplett
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