Re: [gentoo-dev] reorganization of /var/lib gentoo-related files

[Marius Mauch]

On Wed, 31 Dec 2008 12:00:35 +0100
Fabio Rossi <rossi.f@××××××.it> wrote:

> On Wednesday 31 December 2008, Marius Mauch wrote:
>
> > The same could be said about /var/lib/init.d, /var/lib/dhcp,
> > /var/lib/iptables or several other packages that aren't hosted by
> > Gentoo. In the other direction, if the packages are eventually used
> > on other distributions/systems, should they then use another path?
>
> The path could be configured of course but, again, I see a few
> chances of having this tools outside gentoo, the proposal is based
> also on this idea.
>
> > Mind that this only addresses the FHS part of my mail, you haven't
> > really answered my question: What's the benefit of changing things?
> > Change for the sake of change is rarely a good idea (unless you
> > work in PR/marketing ;)
>
> The main benefit is a cleaner filesystem, I don't know your opinion
> but I hate to see sparse files around the tree and waste time in
> discovering their source :-) Moreover IMHO it gives me the impression
> of a better design.

Ok, so in other word aesthetics.
 
> > > In the opposite direction, in according to your opinion, I don't
> > > see a reason to have /var/lib/gentoo/news instead of something
> > > like /var/lib/gentoo-news.
> >
> > Right. But retroactively changing GLEP 42 and all affected packages
> > is a bit much just to avoid a generic "gentoo" directory.
>
> So we can exploit this condition to collect all gentoo related files
> inside this dir ;-)

Well, the impact is about the same wether you want to change one or the
other (btw, what about other admin tools on Gentoo, e.g.
paludis/pkgcore, by your definition they'd also have to go
into /var/lib/gentoo, right?), and that impact is non-trivial (it's not
so much the code changes themselves but the inevitable transition
problems).
Compared to the IMO very questionable benefit of a "cleaner"
filesystem (by hiding files users usually don't see anyway one level
deeper in the tree structure) that more or less goes against the FHS,
that doesn't sound like a good deal to me.

Marius