Re: (REPOST) user-specific package configuration information
Please, let's try not to be taken by the maniacal temptation
to standardize what is already well insered inside
of the Unix philosophy.
There is no need that all the application running on every Unix out there
and using ~/.- files, (and maybe shring them with other applications),
should work differently with Linux.
No developers will accept to change the code for an imposed standard while
all the other Unix are properly working.
Also the user should be ordered inside of his account,
but in Unix .- files have been invented also for user level
configuration purpose. This was the unix standard
as it was intended to be.
It worked.
Actually there is the tendency not to remember this.
But if i am developer of an
application that is whidelly used since 15 years using a ~/.- file for
configuration purpose, be sure, at less
i will be very reluctant to change this just forLinux, and
seeing all the other Unixes keeping
the good old way of doing things.
Luigi Genoni
On Wed, 4 Jul 2001, Jan Schaumann wrote:
> Date: Wed, 4 Jul 2001 11:07:35 -0400
> From: Jan Schaumann <jschauma@netmeister.org>
> To: lsb-discuss@lists.linuxbase.org
> Subject: Re: (REPOST) user-specific package configuration information
> Resent-Date: Wed, 4 Jul 2001 17:08:52 +0200
> Resent-From: lsb-discuss@lists.linuxbase.org
>
> Theodore Tso <tytso@mit.edu> wrote:
>
> [ standardizing ~/.etc or similar ]
>
> > My sense is that it's probably better to deal with this for new
> > applications than to ask existing applications to change the ways
> > things are done.
>
> This is a good point. But I do feel strongly that something that
> standardizes the ~/.-files is necessary:
>
> [jschauma@www jschauma]$ ls -d1 .* | wc -l
> 223
> [jschauma@www jschauma]$
>
> While existing applications may not necessarily follow a standardization
> for ~/.-files immediately, it would certainly prevent more clutter in my
> $HOME.
>
> Another good point that was brought up was that packages expect to work
> across different unices, not just Linux. Again, this would only apply
> to older, existing applications - new applications could work the same
> with the new ~/.-files on all unices.
>
> The more new applications adopt this style, the more likely it is that
> developers of existing applications might consider changing their
> conf-files-locations in the next release.
>
> > And for new applications, many of which will be GUI applications for
> > GNOME and KDE, it's probably best that configuarion issues be
> > standardized as part of the GNOME and KDE projects.
>
> ~/.gnome and ~/.kde already attempt to keep clutter out of $HOME, and
> these are unlikely to change. And IMHO it would certainly be acceptable
> to have ~/.gnome, ~/.kde and ~/.other.
>
> Applications that access ~/.-files that are not exclusive to the
> application (such as newsreaders relying on ~/.newsrc) are using an
> interchangable file-format - these files should probably remain in
> $HOME, but all other files should go into a different directory. Take
> the newsreader "slrn" for example. It's ".slrnrc" should NOT be in
> $HOME, but rather ~/.other/slrn-version/slrnrc - all other files that
> might be needed by slrn should go there as well, even if created by the
> user (such as .score, macros.sl, signature1, signature2 etc).
>
> Currently, I keep these files also in $HOME and only now do I wonder why
> I do that instead of creating a separate directory. The problem is that
> by all applications barfing into $HOME users feel like all the files
> *should* go there, which is stupid.
>
> Just my $localCurrency->{$smallAmount}
>
> -Jan
>
> --
> Jan Schaumann
> http://www.netmeister.org
>
>
> --
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