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On Tue, 31 Jan 2006 14:03:38 +0000 "Benjamin Smee (strerror)" |
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<strerror@g.o> wrote: |
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| On Tuesday 31 January 2006 12:31, Ciaran McCreesh wrote: |
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| > See, you're not really taking into account the cost of sticking |
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| > files in /etc. For packages where an etc entry is low cost, it's |
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| > already done. |
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| |
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| What is the "cost" you are referring to specifically? I think I know |
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| but I'd like a specific definition. |
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|
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1. Management. For example, handling etc-update. |
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|
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2. Administration. Everything in /etc must be checked and covered by |
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backup policies and the like. Unless you're a home user, in which case |
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you probably just hope for the best... |
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|
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3. Performance. Entries in /etc can have a serious performance impact. |
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The easy example is bash completion, which can be reaaallllly slow if |
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you have a few hundred entries. Less obvious examples are cron entries |
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for things like updatedb -- if you have a few dozen chroots and svn |
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checkouts of large projects, updatedb can take a very long time and eat |
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a lot of battery power. |
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|
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| Agreed, the question then though is how to manage it. Is USE the |
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| right way? Given that there will always be a couple of exceptions, is |
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| it not reasonable to expect that all packages that install cron |
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| entries do it in a consistant manner? |
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|
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Not really. For some packages, cron files must always be installed for |
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proper operation. For some packages, cron files are strictly optional |
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extras for features that many users will not want. For many it's |
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somewhere in between. For packages in the first group, a USE flag is |
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silly. For packages in the second group, not using a USE flag is silly. |
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For the in-between cases, that's one of those areas where the ebuild |
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maintainer has to make an educated decision. |
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|
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-- |
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Ciaran McCreesh : Gentoo Developer (King of all Londinium) |
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Mail : ciaranm at gentoo.org |
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Web : http://dev.gentoo.org/~ciaranm |