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

[Christian Perrier]

Quoting Gerald (Jerry) Carter (jerry at samba.org):

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

Very hard to answer. If we maintain samba for Debian, this is meant to
distribute samba and respecting the Debian policy, which we (DD) agree
on. So, the answer can be yes and no at the same time, imho: if the
FHS does not mandate a change to an "upstream" software behaviour wrt
files locations, Debian maintainers have no reason to change that
behaviour....but, here, the FHS clearly mandates that change.


> 
> > 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.

Well, the fact that Ubuntu puts secrets.tdb is because.....we (Debian)
do. Maybe Steve can enlighten us about the reasons for putting
secrets.tdb (0600) in /var/lib/samba. I have no strong personal advice
here.

> > 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.


That seems to be a good way to go, yes.

Apparently Steve also found a glitch elsewhere which might be
responsible for a bug we have for quite a long time:

10:54 < vorlon> bubulle: oops, szLockDirStub - this shouldn't be part of fhs-filespaths, that's one of the bits
                that breaks the ability to specify other samba directories with the Debian packages


Well, despite the fact that we don't agree....yet...I find this thread
interesting and I think we can advance on some points. Thanks for your
time spent on this.