Hi, Manoj: On Sunday 29 November 2009 04:53:05 Manoj Srivastava wrote: > On Sat, Nov 28 2009, Jesús M. Navarro wrote: > > Hi, Ben: > > > > On Saturday 28 November 2009 08:59:13 Ben Finney wrote: > >> "Jesús M. Navarro" <jesus.nava...@undominio.net> writes: > >> > Not personal but sysadmin related. When I want to find information > >> > about a given package I go to /usr/share/doc/<pkg> so I find > >> > reasonable that the local sysadmin would add notes about the package > >> > right there if needed. > >> > >> No, I don't think that's reasonable. The ‘/usr’ hierarchy (with the > >> important exception of ‘/usr/local’) should be considered entirely the > >> province of the package management system; any files there can appear or > >> disappear as dictated by the packages. > >> > >> The sysadmin's site-local files should be going under ‘/usr/local’, > >> which *is* out of bounds for the package manager. > > > > Strongly questionable: notes about package emacs, installed via package > > manager might go under /usr/share/doc/emacs, why not. > > Why not? Because it is not safe, that's why. There is no > guarantee made by Debian that your files shall not be stomped on, or > that user data will be preserved.
My general stanza is not that would be the best/more sensible place to put files on (I already said I never did it) nor that there isn't a note on some (quite hidden) place saying that's against procedure. It's a bit on a higher level: there's some obvious common behaviour deleting whole (non-empty) directories is not the usual way so unless there are strong reasons (it makes a bit easier going that way because so does the upstream maintainer I don't think qualifies) I'd favour *not* to do that. Do you really find intuitive going to /usr/local/share/doc/emacs to look for extra docs about the package-managed installed emacs -specially when this package already has all its documentation under /usr/share/doc/emacs? Well, I don't. > > But Debian also does not tell you that your file will be there > with the next upload. If you name your file foo.txt, there is nothing > that guarantees that the next version will not have an empty file > called foo.txt in that dir in /usr. Nothing checks to see i there is a > user file there. And, by the same token, when the next+1 version > removes foo.txt, dpkg will happily remove it. True. But again by comparation to other similar behaviours I'd find quite odd that the system would remove/replace /usr/share/<pkg>/local-notes.txt or even /usr/share/doc/<pkg>/mycompany-notes.txt (I think I remember the prefix "local-" to be safe at least under /etc). I know that only files under /etc (well, files marked as "config") are safe to be tweaked by the local administrator on Debian but even that shows more of a limitation/compromise from the used tools than a real common-sense/best world policy (it'd be better to track *all* files, i.e. by means of md5sums, were it not too expensive/burdensome). > So, the user is well advised not to trust any user data under > /usr/share, should be using /usr/local anyway. Given that, while a > trifle odd, I see nothing wrong in removing and recreating > /usr/share/doc/<pkg> with every install. Then why /etc/<pkg>, /var/lib/<pkg> or /var/log/<pkg> won't get the same fate? What's *so* different about /usr/share/<pkg> as to expect it to be managed so differently? (again, I am not saying that there isn't a reason nor that it is even written down somewhere but I'm questioning the overall sensibleness of such a policy; after all the main reason d'etre for a distribution effort is giving a focused common behaviour and integration of an otherwise disparaged bunch of packages; the less details/exemptions for the policy, the better). -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-mentors-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org