Hi all,

Thank you all for your input.

What I've gathered is that this change is overall not that important.  Even if 
it is perhaps a "better" design decision overall, it is probably too late now, 
and is something those who really care can easily achieve by building with:
  -D APP_CONFIG_DIRECTORY=etc/clamav

Honestly, most people will probably end up using a distro build that is 
configured like this aanyways: 
https://docs.clamav.net/manual/Installing/Installing-from-source-Unix.html#a-linux-distribution-style-build
Unix from source (v0.104+) - ClamAV 
Documentation<https://docs.clamav.net/manual/Installing/Installing-from-source-Unix.html#a-linux-distribution-style-build>
Building ClamAV with CMake (v0.104 and newer) The following are instructions to 
build ClamAV version 0.104 and newer using CMake.. Tip: If you wish to build 
ClamAV version 0.103 or older from source, follow these instructions to build 
ClamAV using Autotools.. Building ClamAV with CMake (v0.104 and newer) Install 
prerequisites
docs.clamav.net


I think I was right to put off merging this change to think about it and I'm 
glad I gathered input from the good people on this mailer.

Related: Some day in the future I'd like to see freshclam, and perhaps even 
clamd, work without requiring a configuration file. Moving the location of the 
config files now and then making them optional later will doubtless cause some 
confusion when someone puts the config in the wrong directory and sees it 
"working" but not using their changes.

So I'm going to go ahead and close the pull request and decline the original 
request after all.

Thanks again everyone for your feedback.

-Micah

Micah Snyder
ClamAV Development
Talos
Cisco Systems, Inc.
________________________________
From: clamav-users <clamav-users-boun...@lists.clamav.net> on behalf of G.W. 
Haywood via clamav-users <clamav-users@lists.clamav.net>
Sent: Saturday, July 31, 2021 1:18 PM
To: Micah Snyder (micasnyd) via clamav-users <clamav-users@lists.clamav.net>
Cc: G.W. Haywood <cla...@jubileegroup.co.uk>
Subject: Re: [clamav-users] Opinion wanted: Change default config directory 
usr/clamav

Hi there,

On Sat, 31 Jul 2021, Micah Snyder (micasnyd) via clamav-users wrote:

> ... change the default directory for the config files from
> <prefix>/etc to <prefix>/etc/clamav. ...

This is relatively unimportant.

If it were up to me, I'd look to see if there's already what seems to
be an existing, sane, config directory and, if found, use it.  Perhaps
confirm it with the user building it first; you could even ask for it.
If not found, by all means create something in /usr/local/etc/opt/ or
whatever floats your FHS-compliant boat at the time.  But please try
not to mess things up for existing users who've had to put up with
quite enough of this kind of thing from package mantainers already.

> Unfortunately, I procrastinated it so hard I forgot to merge it
> before the first release candidate. ... I would like your opinion.

This is very important.  Think in terms of, say, trashing the database
for half a million customers.

I've already mentioned privately to Joel that I'm concerned about the
quality control over there.  This reinforces the feeling.  This is the
kind of thing which could de-orbit the ISS and cannot be excused.

Most people think quality control means testing.  It doesn't.

It's mostly about how you design, and document, and implement all your
procedures and processes so that things can *never* get forgotten, or
left out, or put in, by accident.  You need to get a very firm grip on
those things now, before you do more or less anything else.  It's the
manufacturing equivalent of growing up.

There must be somebody in the Cisco empire who deals with this stuff.
Find him, and spend some quality time with him[*].  It'll be worth it.

--

73,
Ged.
[*] The masculine embraces the feminine where the context permits.

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