Bug#54524: http_proxy and web clients.

[Nicolás Lichtmaier <nick@debian.org>]

> >  You have a cost in being non-standard, and I don't think it is worth it
> > this time. What benefits would give us what you propose?
> 
> The cost is greater than /etc/mailname or /etc/papersize ?
> 
> Debian long ago decided not to worry about the issue of being different and
> just build the best distribution it can be. Of course being compatible is
> important, but if we just want to do everything the same as Red Hat then why
> bother?
> 
> Every option should ideally be controllable by:
>  a) an environment variable
>  b) a ~/.<foo>rc file of some sort
>  c) a /etc/<foo>rc file of some sort
> 
> in that order of priority. There are lots of benefits to having each of these
> available. Merely putting http_proxy in /etc/environment will often surprise
> you when things like su - bar -c wget fail to use the proxy, or when commands
> run from boot scripts that clear environment variables. 
> 
> Setting /etc/lynx.conf doesn't provide a convenient single place to configure
> the default system behaviour. Like /etc/mailname, /etc/papersize, and in many
> other cases it's useful to have a single place to configure the default
> behaviour of all tools, especially since it's very likely that you would want
> to set everything at once when a new proxy server is installed or configured.
> 
> The package with the wrapper could also have an update-proxies script that
> packages like squid and wwwoffle would call that would optionally offer to set
> up the /etc/proxies file depending on the user's preferences. Or I guess
> debconf might provide a way to do that now.

 I think this is a matter of taste.

 I would only document existing practice for now. Later, perhaps, we could
discuss if a new schema is worth.