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Bug#679751: marked as done (please clarify package account and home directory location in policy)

Your message dated Thu, 28 Sep 2017 21:05:02 +0000
with message-id <E1dxfzS-00045w-TX@fasolo.debian.org>
and subject line Bug#679751: fixed in debian-policy 4.1.1.0
has caused the Debian Bug report #679751,
regarding please clarify package account and home directory location in policy
to be marked as done.

This means that you claim that the problem has been dealt with.
If this is not the case it is now your responsibility to reopen the
Bug report if necessary, and/or fix the problem forthwith.

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-- 
679751: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=679751
Debian Bug Tracking System
Contact owner@bugs.debian.org with problems
--- Begin Message --- 
Package: debian-policy
Severity: normal

Hi,

many packages have to create system accounts on installation.
Unfortunately, Debian policy is not quite clear on how to handle
these. On the other hand, Debian QA is keen on addressing issues in
account handling, which frequently leads to discussions about how to
handle things like that, resulting in maintainer time being wasted to
make unncessary changes to a package that could have been done "right"
in the first place.

#621833 has a lengthy discussion about what happens to an account on
package removal / purge, but other things are stil open and
unaddressed by Policy.

I won't address the old user name (package versus Dpackage versus
Debian-package versus debian-package) issue here since the discussions
about that have died down in the last years and one gets away pretty
well with Debian-package.

But I need to address the "where to put a users' home dir" issue.
Recently, QA has filed quite some bugs about system users' home dirs
not being allowed in /home, (mis)interpreting the FHS (chapter /home)
at this point, saying

 /home : User home directories (optional)
 /home is a fairly standard concept, but it is clearly a site-specific
  filesystem. [9] The setup will differ from host to host. Therefore, no
  program should rely on this location.

Unfortunately, Policy is not clear on where a system accounts' "home
directory" is to be placed. Thus, a maintainer trying to fix the "bug"
that a home directory was placed *gasp* in /home is risking to do it
wrong again when choosing between /etc/package(/home) and
/var/(lib|cache|spool)/package(/home).

In quite a few packages, the system user's "home" directory might
accumulate dotfiles and/or ssh (keys|known_hosts) files, so this
decision is not quite easy to take.

I would love to have policy clearly say where a system users' home
directory is to be placed. This saves a lot of maintainer time and
grief with QA actions. If this were clearly laid out in Policy, QA
would also be saved from discussions with grumpy maintainers like me,
since they would have a clear reference to cite without having to bend
FHS.

Sorry, but I cannot suggest Policy language since I don't know how do
to things right and I still believe that /home is a valid place for
home directories.

Greetings
Marc

--- End Message ---
--- Begin Message --- 
Source: debian-policy
Source-Version: 4.1.1.0

We believe that the bug you reported is fixed in the latest version of
debian-policy, which is due to be installed in the Debian FTP archive.

A summary of the changes between this version and the previous one is
attached.

Thank you for reporting the bug, which will now be closed.  If you
have further comments please address them to 679751@bugs.debian.org,
and the maintainer will reopen the bug report if appropriate.

Debian distribution maintenance software
pp.
Sean Whitton <spwhitton@spwhitton.name> (supplier of updated debian-policy package)

(This message was generated automatically at their request; if you
believe that there is a problem with it please contact the archive
administrators by mailing ftpmaster@ftp-master.debian.org)


-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA512

Format: 1.8
Date: Thu, 28 Sep 2017 13:27:46 -0700
Source: debian-policy
Binary: debian-policy
Architecture: all source
Version: 4.1.1.0
Distribution: unstable
Urgency: medium
Maintainer: Debian Policy List <debian-policy@lists.debian.org>
Changed-By: Sean Whitton <spwhitton@spwhitton.name>
Closes: 661928 679751 683222 870915 872893 872895 872896 872900 872950 873125 873819 874411
Description: 
 debian-policy - Debian Policy Manual and related documents
Changes:
 debian-policy (4.1.1.0) unstable; urgency=medium
 .
   [ Russ Allbery ]
   * Add back missing parentheses around the man page section in man page
     references in the Policy manual, lost in the conversion to
     reStructuredText.  Thanks, Daniel Shahaf.
   * Revert the contents of the policy.html directory to the multi-page
     HTML output.  (Closes: #872895)
   * Move the single-page HTML output to policy-1.html, matching the
     previous file name, and add the supporting _images and _static
     directories to /usr/share/doc/debian-policy.
   * Remove the stray policy.html.tar.gz file from the built package.
     (Closes: #872896)
   * Simplify the build rules for generating policy.html.
   * Remove some stray build rules left over from DocBook Policy.
   * Restructure the document to ensure proper section numbering in info
     and PDF output except for the appendices.  The appendix numbering
     will require a Sphinx change.  (Closes: #872893, #872950)
   * Rename the info document to debian-policy.info to make it less
     generic, and update the PNG file names accordingly.  (Closes: #872900)
   * Reformat the shared libraries chapter (8) to move footnotes to the end
     of the section of their references and use more succinct
     reStructuredText syntax.  Fix some errors in the shlibs syntax and
     examples introduced by the conversion, and missing newlines in the
     footnote illustrating alternative templates that were lost in the
     DocBook translation.
   * Add a footnote documenting a (complex) command that returns the Debian
     package name for a shared library.  Thanks, Jakub Wilk and Julien
     Cristau.  (Closes: #661928)
   * Add build dependency on latexmk.  (Closes: #873125)
 .
   [ Sean Whitton ]
   * Policy: debian/changelog must exist in source packages
     Wording: Sean Whitton <spwhitton@spwhitton.name>
     Seconded: Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com>
     Seconded: Russ Allbery <rra@debian.org>
     Seconded: Mattia Rizzolo <mattia@debian.org>
     Closes: #683222
   * Policy: /nonexistent is the canonical non-existent home directory
     Wording: Sean Whitton <spwhitton@spwhitton.name>
     Seconded: Russ Allbery <rra@debian.org>
     Seconded: David Bremner <bremner@debian.org>
     Closes: #679751
   * Policy: Correct the description of Testsuite: field
     Wording: Sean Whitton <spwhitton@spwhitton.name>
     Seconded: Russ Allbery <rra@debian.org>
     Seconded: gregor herrmann <gregoa@debian.org>
     Closes: #870915
     Thanks to Ondřej Nový for pointing out the problem.
   * Fix a typo in 4.1.0 upgrading checklist (Closes: #873819).
     Thanks, Martin Kepplinger.
   * Add missing line breaks in summary of the ways in which maintainer
     scripts may be called (Closes: #874411).
     Thanks Sébastian Villemot for reporting the issue, and for the patch.
   * Drop workarounds for dh_sphinxdoc's lack of support for singlehtml.
     Thanks Dmitry Shachnev for the new support in dh_sphinxdoc.
     - Tighten build-dep on sphinx-common.
Checksums-Sha1: 
 fc8a2d0366c4c010ff27e55e2ac607b8eaa7a3d5 2020 debian-policy_4.1.1.0.dsc
 95e8c3f51eec09f1a2bc3f080c491fdd2a5a3f14 673940 debian-policy_4.1.1.0.tar.xz
 f1c0a268abd299b9f97bc3d6190586cc3110f9ac 2368224 debian-policy_4.1.1.0_all.deb
 85aa7b9c27008e35a670b06067ca45ccd7cc4900 12031 debian-policy_4.1.1.0_amd64.buildinfo
Checksums-Sha256: 
 a1119451e9f5b885106bd0406c287382cff2608970b4be43c3bcc538b8d0f508 2020 debian-policy_4.1.1.0.dsc
 3f22724e759ae16448d755035e090aac0eebc8ebb5dd4e72e32f94b6fadf9a61 673940 debian-policy_4.1.1.0.tar.xz
 9871b45e5ac23a7c6badd1746ac4c1b099f49b5dadf083c84eada71c3de34434 2368224 debian-policy_4.1.1.0_all.deb
 db653310a3134e27d91696e7522180598de803e762f5d2ee65333d4be8977fd5 12031 debian-policy_4.1.1.0_amd64.buildinfo
Files: 
 4f8ad71eca112a343b97c5e25df1af89 2020 doc optional debian-policy_4.1.1.0.dsc
 6995150272acc60d1ba9fd9a238bb7b6 673940 doc optional debian-policy_4.1.1.0.tar.xz
 c81cbbc2592e683a49c1871830a874ce 2368224 doc optional debian-policy_4.1.1.0_all.deb
 749866978e4c9bcf91c4e3c939899481 12031 doc optional debian-policy_4.1.1.0_amd64.buildinfo

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--- End Message ---
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