Russ Allbery wrote: > And this is the root of the problem: you want one thing for understandable > reasons, and other people, like myself, would prefer the opposite behavior > of having /etc empty by default for different understandable reasons. We > both understand the other's point of view and simply disagree about the > merits of the features of the two methods. > > Neither side of this preference is going to convince the other any more > than I am going to convince everyone to use Emacs, and yet every time we > have this discussion it turns into an extended effort to convince people > with the opposite preference. > > Maybe it would be more productive to take the preference disagreement as > given and then try to figure out how to proceed given that we're never > going to all agree on the best way of handling configuration files? Is > there some way that we can try to accomodate both groups?
Elsewhere in the thread, I suggested a way to do exactly that: https://lists.debian.org/msgid-search/Z2TfFJX8x-E0Ot12@localhost (https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2024/12/msg00431.html) We could have a package that, when installed, ensures that packages have default/commented/etc configuration files in etc, and when *not* installed, ensures that packages don't install files that match their defaults. (That message outlines one possible implementation strategy, but many different approaches could work. The key detail is to tie it to something the sysadmin can control.) This would make folks who want a template-populated /etc happier because packages currently following the empty-/etc model would better respect their preferences. And it would make folks who want an empty /etc happier because packages currently following the template-populated-/etc model would better respect their preferences. This would also give us a standardized location for template /etc files, which would help folks using either model. I'm *not* suggesting this would be a rapid change, but it could help us gradually work towards more uniform behavior, without people having to give up the advantages of the model they prefer.
