Hi Jan, Jan Stary wrote on Fri, Oct 16, 2015 at 08:17:49AM +0200:
> Should mk.conf(5) be present in /etc/examples, > or is it not there on purpose? Not every potential configuration file needs an example. As a general direction, i'd rather aim for reducing the number of files in /etc/examples/ than proliferating it. The problem is that the directory dilutes documentation. Instead of having all the documentation in one place, it makes you look in two places, the manual and /etc/examples/, doubling the work you have to do when changing a configuration, and creating a risk that some people look at one place and don't even realize the other exists. It also doubles the documentation maintenance work and the risk of documentation getting outdated and contradictory, so grand total, it kind of quadruples the risk of people misconfiguring their system. The concept was introduced to reduce the number of files in /etc/, and that worked well. That doesn't mean all the examples files should stay. Some file formats are complicated enough that moving all the examples to the manual page would make the manual page unwieldy, and those example files are probably there to stay. But for trivial cases - the most extreme one being /etc/examples/hosts.lpd - i'd definitely love to get rid of such files. The mk.conf(5) format is so trivial that it apparently doesn't even need EXAMPLES in the manual page (or if it turns out a specific example might be useful, it could easily be added there). A dedicated examples file would clearly be overkill. Yours, Ingo
