>>>>> "Luca" == Luca Boccassi <bl...@debian.org> writes:
Luca> On Sun, 10 Sept 2023 at 11:31, Simon McVittie <s...@debian.org> wrote:
>>
>> On Sat, 09 Sep 2023 at 19:51:50 -0700, Russ Allbery wrote:
>> > Luca, am I right that service directories are specific to,
>> well, services? > If so, what would you think of moving them to
>> Policy 9.3 alongside the > other discussion of systemd units?
>> They feel out of place here, since > packages that do not use
>> services cannot use this functionality
>>
>> I'm not Luca, but I think you're correct here.
Luca> Moved as suggested. Also incorporated your suggestion on the
Luca> versioned virtual package dependency verbatim.
>> > Luca Boccassi <bl...@debian.org> writes: > > +Packages might
>> need additional files or directories to implement their > >
>> +functionality. Directories that are located under ``/var/`` or >
>> > +``/etc/``, and files that are located under ``/var/``, should
>> not be > > +created manually via maintainer scripts, but instead
>> be declaratively > > +defined via the `tmpfiles.d > >
>> +<https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/tmpfiles.d.html>`_
>> > > +interface. Files and directories under ephemeral
>> filesystems such as > > +``/tmp/`` may also be created and
>> managed via ``tmpfiles.d`` snippets.
>> >
>> > I understand the empty directory part, but I don't believe
>> "files that are > located under /var" is correct unless you
>> specifically mean *empty* files > (and even then, I'm not clear
>> on precisely when this would be needed). > For example,
>> /var/lib/gnubg/gnubg_ts0.bd is created by the gnubg package >
>> maintainer script, and I can see no possible way that action
>> could (or > should) be handled by the tmpfiles.d mechanism.
>>
>> In general tmpfiles.d handles files that exist only as metadata:
>> symbolic links (for which the target is the only interesting
>> fact), empty files (for which the existence and
>> ownership/permissions are the only interesting facts),
>> directories (ditto) and so on.
>>
>> It can also handle files that have static initial contents that
>> do not vary between systems, but can change in a system-specific
>> way later, with initial contents either hard-coded in the
>> tmpfiles.d snippet (for short text strings) or copied from
>> somewhere below /usr (canonically /usr/share/factory).
>>
>> Files generated by non-trivial imperative code, like
>> machine-specific initial contents (/var/lib/dbus/machine-id) or
>> some sort of compiler (/var/lib/gnubg/gnubg_ts0.bd, as far as I
>> can tell), are out of scope for tmpfiles.d, so I think you're
>> right to be concerned that Luca's wording as written is asking
>> gnubg to do something that is unimplementable.
>> ch-maintainerscripts.rst has the same issue.
>>
>> Perhaps "files with trivial contents that are located under /var"
>> would be a good wording that is not overly specific about
>> implementation details, covers the 90% case, and leaves room for
>> exceptions by declaring packages like dbus and gnubg to be
>> non-trivial?
Luca> I have reworded as suggested, citing symlinks or short fixed
Luca> strings as examples.
I second this patch, and do not need to additionally review Russ's
minor rewordings
--Sam
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