Re: Including the FHS in debian-policy (Was: Bug#29408)

[Julian Gilbey <J.D.Gilbey@qmw.ac.uk>]

> On Wed, Apr 28, 1999 at 12:10:40AM +0100, Julian Gilbey wrote:
> > I submitted the following bug report a while ago, and Manoj has just
> > closed it as we have not yet agreed to go with the FHS.
> [..]
> 
> Then obviously we need to agree to move toward it.  Many key parts of
> Debian are already progressing that direction and a number of packages
> are already moving.  My latest test build of epic4 uses FHS compliant
> file locations since they are used upstream anyway.  No harm in this that
> I can see since the rest of the system (or portions of it that matter)
> already support this.
> [...]
> 
> I think potato is migrating toward FHS compliance which is a good thing. 
> man is already working with it.  info I think is being worked on still. 
> I don't know about /usr/doc yet, but I suspect we need to deal with
> /usr/doc/package/examples first.

I see the problem with the examples directories, but am not sure what
to do with it at present.  One possibility is
/usr/doc/examples/<package>, another is to stay with
/usr/doc/<package>/examples, a third is /usr/doc/<package>, but this
might be too confusing.

As I see it, the things we need to do to move towards FHS are:

(1) Modify the "essential" system programs which make presumptions
    about the directory layout: all of the package building tools,
    lintian, man, info, and probably a few others.  It would be very
    embarrassing if these were not done before the transition began in
    earnest.

(2) Modify policy to say that we will now be following the FHS except
    for the following cases: <insert list of exceptions, such as
    dpkg's /var/lib/dpkg>.

(3) Announce this on -devel-announce, with instructions as to which
    packages should be upgraded to cope with the changes (such as
    debhelper, debstd, etc.).  An intended timeframe should be given
    as well.

We must be careful to ensure that non-FHS compliant packages don't
break the system, though, as there are certain to be a large number of
packages which don't get converted soon enough, and a wholesale NMU
will take a lot of effort.

Just my thought on the subject, as we work towards a proposal.

   Julian

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  Julian Gilbey, Dept of Maths, QMW, Univ. of London. J.D.Gilbey@qmw.ac.uk
             Debian GNU/Linux Developer.  jdg@debian.org
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