[gentoo-dev] Re: Why isn't /root/.bash_profile in the stage tarballs?

[Duncan]

Chris Gianelloni <wolf31o2@g.o> posted
1190305172.8728.19.camel@××××××××××××××××.org, excerpted below, on  Thu,
20 Sep 2007 09:19:31 -0700:

> While I would normally agree, there's nothing wrong with having sensible
> defaults.  After all, we install a bunch of stuff into /home/$user
> thanks to /etc/skel, so how is this different?

The big distinction (other than the privilege one) IMO is that putting 
things into /etc/skel isn't directly inserting them into a "live" user's 
home dir.  There's a level of indirection, such that "live" users don't 
have their "live" environments interfered with, and such that there's a 
chance for the admin to review things if desired, before actually acting 
on anything in skel in terms of setting up a new user.

IOW, a direct comparison would be if we setup something like 
/etc/rootskel/.  Of course, that's not quite a correct parallel either, 
since it's not often that a new "root" user appears =8^P, but the point 
I'm trying to make by drawing the parallel should be obvious.

Matter of fact, I'd rather /etc/profile was handled a bit more indirectly 
as well, say treating it much like /etc/make.conf, creating 
make.conf.example if the file already existed, or like the /usr/share/
baselayout/* files, as I handle the system profile rather differently 
here too, but that's a somewhat different argument as it's existing 
behavior (to some extent addressed with etc-update, but one could say so 
was fstab).  At least we can avoid creating further problems of the sort 
we're avoiding with the above *.example and baselayout/* cases, however, 
as the current proposal would IMO do.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman

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