/usr/share

[Brian White <bcwhite@verisim.com>]

I'm finding that I really dislike having packages put things in /usr/share.

1) If /usr/share is a read-only mount, then I have to unmount it.  This means
   that all the files under /usr/share still get installed on my machine even
   if I'm mounting that directory from elsewhere.  (I can delete them, but
   it's still an inconvenience and I never remember to unmount until I
   get an error.)

2) If /usr/share is a read-write mount , then I can overwrite what is already
   there and thus possibly cause incompatibilities on other network machines
   that could be, at best, difficult to trace.

3) If I don't mount /usr/share, then it uses the same amount of disk space
   as if it was installed under /usr with no added value.

So, in the case of #1 and #3 there is no savings in disk space and in the
case of #2 (and I'd think read-write mounts of /usr/share are uncommon) there
is a danger of causing incompatibilities.

Thus, I propose we make /usr/share be treated the same way as /usr/local
and not allow packages to put anything under it but directories.  In most
cases, it should be easy to make the program search /usr/local, then
/usr/share, then /usr/lib, so we can still keep the same basic functionality.

I think this would be a good policy for Debian 2.1.  I can see no advantages
to using /usr/share in packages except for having shared configuration and
this can easily (is most cases) be fixed by searching /usr/share in between
searching /usr/local and /usr/lib.

Comments?

                                          Brian
                                 ( bcwhite@verisim.com )

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