Bug#37345: [PROPOSAL] Adopt the FHS in place of FSSTND

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

Package: debian-policy
Severity: wishlist

[After having brought this up a few times and not got very far, let's
actually try a formal proposal.  My first one, so apologies if I
haven't got the protocol quite right.]

Background
==========

Policy 3.1 currently requires the filesystem layout to follow the
FSSTND (Linux Filesystem Standard).  This is becoming problematic for
a number of reasons:

 - the FSSTND has been officially superseded by the FHS (Filesystem
   Hierarchy Standard), the FHS having built on the earlier work done
   by the FSSTND group

 - in future, we are likely to see increasing demands for systems to
   be FHS-compliant (or at least partially compliant and fully
   compatible) rather than FSSTND-compliant

 - several Debian packages already have components stored in the
   locations defined by the FHS rather than by the FSSTND (such as the
   tetex-* suite); this will lead to significant interoperability
   problems between the various Debian packages if this issue is not
   tackled soon


PROPOSAL
========

(1) That section 3.1 of the policy be rewritten replacing every
    reference to "FSSTND" by the equivalent reference to "FHS".

(2) That a period of consultation on -devel and/or -policy during the
    course of the implementation of this change will determine which,
    if any, exceptions to the FHS are required.  This will form a new
    section 3.1.3 of policy, whose exact wording obviously cannot be
    proposed at this stage.


Rationale
=========

Converting to the FHS will be a significant challenge, and even were
we to not succeed in doing it fully immediately, we must aim towards
it, especially in light of the points mentioned in the Background
above.  In particular, we need to think about how to make changes to
such things as the documentation directories (as /usr/share/doc might
not be appropriate for compiled examples) and so forth.  But without
the decision that we are actually aiming for the FHS, this will not
happen.  It is also important to coordinate the various changes;
again, a policy decision is necessary for the project as a whole to
appreciate that the changes are really happening.

Exceptions to the FHS might well include the /var/lib/dpkg tree, which
will not move to /var/state/dpkg, as it is simply too dangerous to
make the move, according to Ian Jackson IIRC.

   Julian

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

  Julian Gilbey, Dept of Maths, QMW, Univ. of London. J.D.Gilbey@qmw.ac.uk
             Debian GNU/Linux Developer.  jdg@debian.org
       -*- Finger jdg@master.debian.org for my PGP public key. -*-