Re: Debian equivalent of /etc/profile.d

[Cameron Hutchison <camh+dl@xdna.net>]

Once upon a time Paul Gear said...
> 
> P.S.  I can't believe Debian doesn't have /etc/profile.d.  :-)  Time to
> submit the above as a patch?

Section 9.9 of the Debian policy has this to say about environment
variables:

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9.9. Environment variables
--------------------------

     A program must not depend on environment variables to get reasonable
     defaults.  (That's because these environment variables would have to
     be set in a system-wide configuration file like `/etc/profile', which
     is not supported by all shells.)

     If a program usually depends on environment variables for its
     configuration, the program should be changed to fall back to a
     reasonable default configuration if these environment variables are
     not present.  If this cannot be done easily (e.g., if the source code
     of a non-free program is not available), the program must be replaced
     by a small "wrapper" shell script which sets the environment variables
     if they are not already defined, and calls the original program.

     Here is an example of a wrapper script for this purpose:
          #!/bin/sh
          BAR=${BAR:-/var/lib/fubar}
          export BAR
          exec /usr/lib/foo/foo "$@"

     Furthermore, as `/etc/profile' is a configuration file of the
     `base-files' package, other packages must not put any environment
     variables or other commands into that file.

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