Bug#759316: Document the use of /etc/default for cron jobs

[Charles Plessy <plessy@debian.org>]

Le Tue, Aug 26, 2014 at 09:55:29AM +0200, Tanguy Ortolo a écrit :
> 
> For practical reasons, variables that are used to configure init scripts
> behaviour are placed in separate files in /etc/default, as documented in
> Policy §9.3.2.
> 
> The same is often applied to cron jobs as well, for the same practical
> reasons as crontab jobs are quite similar to init scripts (being both
> configuration files and scripts, and containing both configuration and
> code). But, contrary to init scripts, this practice is not yet
> documented in the Policy.
> 
> I think this practice would be worth adding to the Policy, as it is both
> useful and already used with no opposition as far as I know. If that
> seems relevant, I can write a patch for that.

Hi Tanguy and everybody,

I am unsure what the standard practice is in this situation.  Can you and
others comment on the existence or not of alternatives, in Debian and
elsewhere ?

If we document the use of /etc/default to configure cron jobs without
considering alternatives, the risk will be to push towards a Debian-only
standard, or worse, to push maintainers to modify upstream cron jobs using a
legitimate way to configure, but not using /etc/default. 

Have a nice day,

-- 
Charles Plessy
Tsurumi, Kanagawa, Japan