On Sat, Feb 08, 2020 at 05:33:34PM +0100, Ingo Schwarze wrote: > Hi, > > i think i said it before: i hate /etc/examples/ and think that the > directory ought to be mostly empty. With the exception of rare > cases like bgpd(8), where you have to provide a lot of information > before you can start it in any meaningful way, i consider a deamon > ill-designed if the configuration is so complicated that a file in > /etc/examples/ serves any purpose. Daemons should have a reasonable > default configuration, such that a configuration file is not needed > for typical usage, and if people add a configuration file, they > ought to get away with very few lines. By the way, acme-client(1) > is an example where i was happy to recently see people work into just > that direction. > > Providing example configuration files is an idiotic concept because > if you copy them into /etc/, you no longer easily see what the > defaults are, what generic recommendations are, and what was changed > locally. It should be made easy to write short configuration files > from scratch such that they contain absolutely nothing except local > changes. > > For daemons designed as described, if they have some complicated > configuration commands for special purposes, a few typical > examples of these commands can be shown in the EXAMPLES section of > the manual page. > > Note that in the past, there was no consensus about the above, so > i'm not suggesting that we move all the examples into the manual > pages. I'm only saying *trivial* files in /etc/examples/ should > be deleted and the content, if any, moved to the manual pages. Some > files will no doubt remain, and there is nothing wrong with that.
Agreed. -- Antoine
