[PATCH] 2/2: Associate file locations to newly introduced path variables

[simo]

On Wed, 2007-10-17 at 13:09 -0500, Gerald (Jerry) Carter wrote:
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> Christian Perrier wrote:
> 
> > If you actually apply both patches, let's be honest: 
> > there will be indeed *no change* for Samba users, when they
> > use the upstream source.
> > 
> > Again, these two patches are not meant to modify Samba's 
> > behaviour wrt files locations: they are meant to *allow*
> > this to happen, if users want to.
> 
> I don't see this as a benefit to users.  Only Debian.  In fact,
> by allowing this, I believe that it will cause more confusion
> than it will help.

Honestly I don't follow you here, care to explain why, if the defaults
do not change ?

> I'll ask you a question: If not for the FHS, would you have
> made this patch?

Obviously not, but all distros are trying to be FHS compatible, and we
have to admit samba has been historically lacking understanding FHS (I
am not making a point about this being good or bad, bust stting a fact).

> > So, the benefit lies in this: it gives Samba users more
> > configurability for the file locations, whatever their religious
> > beliefs are about where files should lie...:-)
> 
> I don't think that is a good thing.  The fact that Ubuntu
> puts secrets.tdb in /var/lib/samba/ is bad enough.

Care to explain why ?
I have it in /var/lib/samba/private in Fedora.

> > If we define ourselves (Debian *and* Ubuntu maintainers) 
> > as "users", this gives us the great benefit of a much much
> > easier build of new versions, by reducing the size of our
> > diff file by about one order of magnitude.
> > 
> > If we define *other* distros as users, they would benefit 
> > of this too...if we assume that all of them should indeed
> > try to implement the FHS as precisely as possible.
> 
> Other than /var/run/, I believe you are misapplying the
> FHS
> 
> Give me a patch that moves codepages data files to data_directory()
> and one that moves the CLEAF_IF_FIRST to /var/run/ and I'll agree
> to that.  Then we can debate the finer points of /var/cache.  I
> don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater here.  So let's
> deal with what we can agree on first.

I think we need to explain more, correct me if I am wrong, but my
understanding is that you claim that just moving files around is going
to be a maintenance problem as developers may not follow the FHS
guideline.

To make sure we are correct wrt these guidelines we'd need an automatism
that checks for use what kind of files we are going to deploy and
provides the correct location based on the type, not on the name ?

I am not sure I am capturing your point of view completely, and I am
sure I am missing something.

Simo.

-- 
Simo Sorce
Samba Team GPL Compliance Officer <simo at samba.org>
Senior Software Engineer at Red Hat Inc. <ssorce at redhat.com>