> > You have a cost in being non-standard, and I don't think it is worth it > > this time. What benefits would give us what you propose? > > The cost is greater than /etc/mailname or /etc/papersize ? > > Debian long ago decided not to worry about the issue of being different and > just build the best distribution it can be. Of course being compatible is > important, but if we just want to do everything the same as Red Hat then why > bother? > > Every option should ideally be controllable by: > a) an environment variable > b) a ~/.<foo>rc file of some sort > c) a /etc/<foo>rc file of some sort > > in that order of priority. There are lots of benefits to having each of these > available. Merely putting http_proxy in /etc/environment will often surprise > you when things like su - bar -c wget fail to use the proxy, or when commands > run from boot scripts that clear environment variables. > > Setting /etc/lynx.conf doesn't provide a convenient single place to configure > the default system behaviour. Like /etc/mailname, /etc/papersize, and in many > other cases it's useful to have a single place to configure the default > behaviour of all tools, especially since it's very likely that you would want > to set everything at once when a new proxy server is installed or configured. > > The package with the wrapper could also have an update-proxies script that > packages like squid and wwwoffle would call that would optionally offer to set > up the /etc/proxies file depending on the user's preferences. Or I guess > debconf might provide a way to do that now.
I think this is a matter of taste. I would only document existing practice for now. Later, perhaps, we could discuss if a new schema is worth.
