On Fri, Feb 28, 2014 at 7:47 PM, William Hubbs <willi...@gentoo.org> wrote: > > Patrick thinks that all configuration files belong in /etc, and what has > happened is, some packages are placing default configuration > files in /lib or /usr/lib and allowing them to be overridden by files > with the exact same names and paths in /etc. His argument is that only > libraries belong in /lib or /usr/lib. > I didn't get that vibe from what was quoted in OP. Maybe there's something missing. But let's be real here: if I install something and want to configure its system-wide bits, the first place I go is ALWAYS /etc. When I don't find it there, with the rest of the system config files, my day gets a little worse and I lose a bit of time trying to interrogate a search engine for the answer. And that's annoying. That sucks.
I don't particularly care about the history, or the politics, or what upstreams think they have the right to decide for me. Sure, it might be "only" convention, but even then it's still valuable by merit of allowing you to make (often correct) predictions about where to configure your shiny new daemon and by reducing cognitive load (no need to remember that "Okay, so bonehead has its config in /usr/lib/bone/head/ and sillyd has it's config in /var/silly/comedy/, and...where was riced.conf, again?"). > I disagree with this based on understanding how the config system in > these packages works. Also, I don't think a distro should do this type of > patching if the patches are not accepted upstream. > I somehow get the sense that you're talking about specific packages, but more generally: If there's some legitimate reason the config can't go where configs...go (like the package hardcoding the path to the config without any overrides possible (which sounds absolutely moronic, IMO. What if you want to temporarily test a new config?)) then sure, let it live where it lives. But for stuff where they're already able to be overridden by a version in /etc anyway? I don't think "if users are supposed to be able to modify it, the config should be /etc" is an unreasonable position to take. Reducing user pain isn't an all-or-nothing exercise. Cheers, Wyatt
