Re: About the new ConTeXt package [was: Bug#394594: texlive-context: Context is approx 45 versions out of date]

[Florent Rougon <f.rougon@free.fr>]

[ Mike, are you subscribed to debian-tex-maint or should we continue to
  Cc you? Because the official policy on Debian mailing-lists is *not*
  to Cc people unless explicitely requested... ]

Mike Bird <mgb-debian@yosemite.net> wrote:

> Created a new empty /usr/local/share/texmf and then ran "texfont ..."
> successfully. Note that according to "dpkg -S" this directory does not
> belong to any package. Since the "context" package contains
> "/usr/bin/texfont" perhaps the package should ensure that
> /usr/local/share/texmf exists.

Yes, but certainly not by shipping /usr/local/share/texmf in the .deb
(hence, it's actually expected that "dpkg -S" doesn't find it). Quoting
Policy § 9.1.2 :

     As mandated by the FHS, packages must not place any files in
     `/usr/local', either by putting them in the file system archive to be
     unpacked by `dpkg' or by manipulating them in their maintainer
     scripts.

     However, the package may create empty directories below `/usr/local'
     so that the system administrator knows where to place site-specific
     files.  These are not directories _in_ `/usr/local', but are children
     of directories in `/usr/local'.  These directories
     (`/usr/local/*/dir/') should be removed on package removal if they are
     empty.

     Note, that this applies only to directories _below_ `/usr/local', not
     _in_ `/usr/local'.  Packages must not create sub-directories in the
     directory `/usr/local' itself, except those listed in FHS, section
     4.5.  However, you may create directories below them as you wish.  You
     must not remove any of the directories listed in 4.5, even if you
     created them.

     Since `/usr/local' can be mounted read-only from a remote server,
     these directories must be created and removed by the `postinst' and
     `prerm' maintainer scripts and not be included in the `.deb' archive.
                                ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
     These scripts must not fail if either of these operations fail.

These paragraphs are followed by sample snippets for handling these
directories in postinst and postrm scripts.

-- 
Florent