On Thu, Sep 14, 2023 at 04:01:05PM +0200, Daniel Gröber wrote: > Hello debian-policy, > > iproute2 has moved it's config files that were traditionally at > /etc/iproute2 to /usr/lib/iproute2 due to an upstream change. I've tried to > convince the maintainer(s) that this is a bad idea in Bug#1051577, when > this was shot down I filed Bug#1051847 as severity:serious on the basis of > Debian policy section 10.7.2 section 10.7.2. "Configuration files / > Location" which states as follows: > > > Any configuration files created or used by your package must reside > > in /etc. > > Pretty clear cut in my reading, however this was promptly shot down by > Bastian <waldi> with the justification: > > > No, it does not. The files in /usr are defaults. Those should be copied > > to /etc for modification, which is config. > > Am I going nuts? Somehow long established unix convention and usability > doesn't matter anymore and policy doesn't mean what it says?
The idea is that files in /usr/ are default files that can be overrided or supplemented by a configuration file in /etc/ with the same name. When properly documented, this is a very good scheme since that make update of configuration file easier. The kpathsea system of TeX is an extreme version of that scheme that allow several level of override simultaneously. For a simple example, popularity-contest ships /usr/share/popularity-contest/default.conf as default file which is overrided by the configuration file /etc/popularity-contest.conf /usr/share/popularity-contest/default.conf says PARTICIPATE="no" and users that want to participate set PARTICIPATE="yes" in /etc/popularity-contest.conf (through debconf) to override it. It is recommended that /etc/ carry dummy configuration files that provide information on the default file they override. Of course changing the configuration files scheme is a different issue and need to be done carefully so that users understand what is expected of them. Cheers, -- Bill. <ballo...@debian.org> Imagine a large red swirl here.
