Hi everyone,
I am a tech writer, as part of my job I also have to maintain a number of servers, various UNIX systems. Yes, I am a dev as well ....
I have used Debian since 2001 and I do not want to be understood as some UNIX nerd or fanatic.
I have an honest question which is dead-simple: Why do we have ".d" directories, such as "sources.d" or "grub.d", note that with grub, the defaults are in another directory tree - this is simply beyond insane. (Sorry to quote Linus)
I am sure this question has been asked before (I have googled for many years and have not found an acceptable answer, the downside being having to parse several files vs a single file) and I am more than happy to accept "change", except that in this case it needlessly increases my workload. With ancient UNIX systems, a sed oneliner is enough, with Linux, I have to use "grep -r" or use "find" in combination with "sed". I seriously think this is nonsense, there is no "logical" reason for doing this, afaict. Have I missed something ? I have asked the question on unix.stackexchange.com and got silly answers trying to defend the "it is so much easier to parse x files in a directory than a single file" stance (you gotta be kidding!).
I would really appreciate answers on this, I never had the nerve to ask this, because you all write great software !!!! And yes, I donate ...
I have waited many years before reporting this because I lacked confidence, but seriously ...I think this is a bug and it needs to be fixed. ".d" is braindead, does not add any functionality that cannot be replicated with the "Enter" key on a keyboard and, in the worst case, a line starting with # followed by some comment.
Some admins where I work are happy to rename the files in the ".d" directory to their liking ...a silly and futile attempt to stop me from pruning the repos the servers use ...hmmmm
HP