On Mon May 6, 2024 at 5:01 PM BST, Luca Boccassi wrote: > On Mon, 6 May 2024 at 16:51, Barak A. Pearlmutter <ba...@cs.nuim.ie> > wrote: > > For whatever reason, a lot of people who process large data use > > /var/tmp/FOO/ as a place to store information that should not be > > backed up, but also should not just disappear. > > Then such people, assuming they actually exist, can configure their > custom systems accordingly upon reading the release notes before > upgrading, as they would do anyway if installing on CentOS or any > other major OS. Hence, not an issue either.
They actually exist. I'm been one of them, I've worked with many of them, it's an incredibly common pattern in academic computing at least, and changing it in Debian should be a very carefully explored decision. You've pointed out that changing the behaviour from the default, in either direction, is trivial. The issue is not one of individual preference but of what is default. The long-established status quo is not to clean /var/tmp. There is serious risk here: to users data and correspondingly to Debian's reputation for stability, which many of us have worked hard to maintain for a very long time. If you think we need hard data to quantify this practice, then let's work on a plan for how to gather that going forward, rather than dismiss this outright because we haven't collected it. Else-thread, Russ begs people to stop doing this. I agree people shouldn't! We should also work on education and promotion of the alternatives. I'd like to hear some arguments *in favour* of making this change. Alignment with systemd-upstream, reduced package maintenance burden are two that I can think of, but perhaps I've missed more. These two, IMHO, are significantly outweighed by the risks. Please hold off making this change now and let this discussion continue. -- Please do not CC me for listmail. 👱🏻 Jonathan Dowland ✎ j...@debian.org 🔗 https://jmtd.net
