Jan Braun: > Package: dpkg-dev,debhelper > Followup-For: Bug #942111 > Control: reopen 942111 > > Dear Maintainer, > > Sorry for being late to the party. > Please reconsider the XDG_RUNTIME_DIR part of this change. > > XDG_RUNTIME_DIR is a systemd-ism, and due to the way it is specified, > it's extremely unlikely to be implemented in other init systems. It also > poses problems for tools like su/sudo. > > In particular, this part: > https://specifications.freedesktop.org/basedir-spec/basedir-spec-latest.html > [...] > > is an insurmountable obstacle unless one (re-)implements systemd's idea > of login tracking. The only other conforming behaviour is unexporting > XDG_RUNTIME_DIR. > > Hence, any tool (outside systemd and related packages) relying on > XDG_RUNTIME_DIR being set is buggy. I don't think catering to these bugs > is a good idea. > > > Personally, I think it's a shame XDG_RUNTIME_DIR has been defined this > way; if creating at boot/login and deleting at shutdown was a > permissible implementation, it could be cross-init, and thus actually > useful. Water under the bridge now tho. > > Thank you for maintaining debhelper. > regards, > Jan > > [...]
Hi Jan, Thanks for taking the time to provide the feedback. Unfortunately, I fail to see how it applies to the particular situation. Having debhelper support/do this will have no influence on whether init or login systems will need to support it in the first place AFAICT. The use case in debhelper is to setup an empty directory and point an ENV variable at it to ensure we get a defined result *if* a tool uses that ENV variable (namely, the tool gets a writeable empty directory for the duration of the build). Note that debhelper's usage do *not* follow the spec to the letter - unless we define the build start to as a "login" and d/rules clean as a "logout". Thanks, ~Niels
