Hello, On Mon 23 Dec 2024 at 01:32pm -08, Russ Allbery wrote:
> Policy defines configuration files as: > > A file that affects the operation of a program, or provides site- or > host-specific information, or otherwise customizes the behavior of a > program. Typically, configuration files are intended to be modified by > the system administrator (if needed or desired) to conform to local > policy or to provide more useful site-specific behavior. > > The word "typically" here makes a reading that all files containing > configuration information, whether or not they are intended for editing, > might need to be in /etc. This is pretty clearly not the intended meaning > given historic practice in Debian (see, for example, *.desktop files, the > files in /usr/share/zsh/vendor-completions, /usr/lib/news/innshellvars, > or /usr/share/autoconf/autom4te.cfg, all of which hold configuration > information but are not intended to be edited). > > I believe we should reword this definition to make it explicit that Policy > is not saying that every source of configuration information must be in > /etc, but rather that any file a system administrator may reasonably be > intended to edit as part of configuring the software for use on a specific > system is a configuration file (whether or not it is a conffile), and > therefore should be in /etc. > > We may want to explicitly say that this is consistent with a model where > defaults are loaded from a file in /usr and then overrides are loaded from > a file in /etc, since this configuration practice is becoming more common > and seems obviously superior to a model where defaults are hard-coded in a > binary. Indeed, this isn't great text both for all the not-intended-to-be-edited stuff we have shipped there, plus the /usr-and-overrides thing more recently. Thanks for the write-up. -- Sean Whitton
signature.asc
Description: PGP signature
