Re: does /var/games have to be deleted on purge? (if it's empty..)

[Russ Allbery <rra@debian.org>]

Responding to a message from last April that had been sitting in my
to-process queue.

Holger Levsen <holger@layer-acht.org> writes:
> On Montag, 6. April 2009, Russ Allbery wrote:

>> I don't see much real benefit in going out of our way to remove
>> /var/games and it looks like it would be a bit annoying (at the least,
>> require adding purge code to all games that put files in /var/games
>> that would usually never be triggered).  My inclination would be to say
>> that this behavior is fine and perhaps we should officially bless it
>> somewhere.

> I've come to agree with this. :-) Now, where to bless it?

I was going to look to see where to patch Policy to talk about this, but
after looking through Policy to see where one would put that information,
I couldn't find anywhere in Policy that specifies which files should be
removed on package purge.  There are specific requirements around
configuration files and log files, but other than that Policy seems to
take for granted that anyone reading it understands what purging means.

Should we add a section to Policy somewhere that explains the package
states and what the requirements of a package are around preserving or
removing its data other than log files and configuration files on purge?
If so, that would be the relevant place to talk about whether or not
directories like /var/games should be removed when empty (and similarly
/var/games/package, /var/lib/package, etc.).

-- 
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org)               <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>