Bug#832901: apt: "apt upgrade -s" tries to remove a file
On 2016-07-29 19:19:05 +0200, David Kalnischkies wrote:
> This log file has basically only one purpose: It can be attached to
> bugreports so that a triager can reproduce the ordering problem a user
> encounter. If the user encountered it in a simulation or not makes no
> pratical difference and in fact, the subsystem involved here has no
> knowledge about simulation or not for the exact same reason. It is
> considerable easier to produce the same file after a simulation of
> course as the state it records hasn't changed according to your requests
> for real… until we realize that this could equally well be aptitude or
> whatever else based on libapt where retracing your steps is slightly
> harder than pressing up at the command prompt…
Then I'd say that more debugging information than log.
> In so far it isn't the archetypical log file, but it seemed to fit best
> in that category. I would dislike dropping such a file in /tmp or ~/
> because it doesn't belong there even if there is precedence by other
> tools. Its also not for state keeping (/var/lib) and not a cache
> (/var/cache) as its never read.
Well, the goal of creating such a file is that it may be read.
Note also that /var/cache also contains backups of cache files,
which will normally not be read again.
> It does log the current state of the
> system through which is why I placed it in /var/log. Its not ideal that
> this is root-only, but as mentioned I really don't like ~/.
>
> Do you have a better suggestion for a location?
It seems that tools often put debugging information in /tmp. I think
that one reason is that it is writable by the user. If the user's
home is used, it should be in a dedicated directory.
But perhaps a new location for such data should be introduced, such
as /var/debug for root and perhaps ~/.cache/debug for the user (the
goal of .cache seems more general than caches, and is actually for
any non-essential data[*]).
[*] The XDG spec says: "There is a single base directory relative to
which user-specific non-essential (cached) data should be written."
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Vincent Lefèvre <vincent@vinc17.net> - Web: <https://www.vinc17.net/>
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