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

[Adeodato Simó <dato@net.com.org.es>]

+ Russ Allbery (Mon, 06 Apr 2009 11:33:41 -0700):

> 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 agree with this. We’re trying to move away (eg. with triggers) from
stuff that has to be propagated to every maintainer scripts, and I
really don’t see how removing an empty /var/games is such a big benefit
that would make it worth our time to enforce rmdir’s everywhere.

Additionally, what happens if package A and B both ship an empty
/var/games (they both write their score files directly there, rather
than a subdirectory), get both installed, then B gets purged and its
postinst removes /var/games, and then A runs and tries to write to
/var/games a score file, but the directory does no longer exist nor has
the game write permission to create it. Is there or is there going to be
a policy mandating that packages should not ship /var/games without
shipping /var/games/<name>?

Thanks,

-- 
- Are you sure we're good?
- Always.
        -- Rory and Lorelai