Should /site-lisp/subdirs.el be provided?

[Agustin Martin <agustin.martin@hispalinux.es>]

Hi,

I have noticed something that sounds strange to me, some of the emacs
flavours are providing site-lisp/subdirs.el

[emacs21-common]        /usr/share/emacs21/site-lisp/subdirs.el
[emacs22-common]        /usr/share/emacs/22.1/lisp/subdirs.el
[emacs-snapshot-common] /usr/share/emacs/23.0.60/lisp/subdirs.el

while xemacs packages do not provide it.

Since site-lisp is the place where apps are placing their lisp files
and, according to debian emacsen policy they are told how to explicitly
add the path in the init file by means of (debian-pkg-add-load-path-item)
function, this has the drawback that, even if the /etc/emacs/site-start.d
init file is edited to disable using the Debian provided stuff (sometimes
this is good for tests),  it will stay available and loaded because of
subdirs.el.

Furthermore, it will be twice in the load path. Unfortunately, this seems
not the reason for

#117564 [/usr/local/share/emacs/ is later in the load path than system dirs]

because if subdirs.el is renamed to something else (and so disabled), the
entries left are those placed in the wrong place (before the local stuff).
Putting subdirs.el does not help, it adds entries after the local stuff,
but former entries will prevail.

What do others think about site-lisp/subdir.el presence?

-- 
Agustin