[csw-maintainers] Adjusting $(DIRPATHS) for sparse zones support with shared /opt

[Ben Walton]

Excerpts from Philip Brown's message of Fri Jun 19 13:34:19 -0400 2009:
> > Do you agree that having two etc directories for an installation
> > without nfs/zone sharing is pointless?
> 
> Why even ask that question?
> So you can say, "well then, lets forget about sharing and optimize for the
>  non-shared case"?

No, just a staring point.

> > > Not very large-scale-install friendly.
> > 
> > Large-scale sites are exactly the same types of installations that
> > would be using cfengine/puppet/etc to manage things like this.
> 
> Some do, some dont.
> Also, using cfengine or puppet to handle this, would merely be a hack
> around a core problem that the package provider (ie: us) is not providing 
> proper large-install aware packages in the first place!

I disagree here.  The problem isn't that things aren't packaged nicely
for this situation, it's that software isn't written to support this
situation.  If most packages provided support for $localsysconf and
$globalsysconf, sourcing global and then overlaying local, I'd say
that maintaining 2 etc directories made perfect sense.  Given that
this certainly isn't the case, I don't think 2 etc's is good.

> > Do you agree that if everything were in /etc/opt/csw and a site wanted
> > to share their csw install, a move on the server of /etc/opt/csw to
> > /opt/csw/etc and a symlink of /etc/opt/csw -> /opt/csw/etc on the all
> > machines consuming this particular /opt/csw would handle things just
> > fine?  (Packages wanting/needing local customization could still
> > symlink individual files to somewhere else as you noted.)
> 
> That is ugly.

Uglier than having etc directories all over the place?  At best, I
think we can say that there isn't an optimal solution for consumers of
CSW in a setup like this.

> Besides, you may just as equally say, "everything should use /opt/csw/etc,
>  and people who want local configs, should symlink /opt/csw/etc
>  ->/etc/opt/csw"

But then we're still scattering etc directories around the system.  To
be honest, I'd prefer that all CSW etc be consolidated into a single
location, even if the chosen location doesn't see it become a subset
of the system etc tree.

> > It would also be nice, but difficult to determine, how many sites
> > actually use csw like this.  1%?  5%?  More?  Less?
> > 
> 
> I dont think this is a good question to base decisions on.
> Again, it has behind it, the mindset and assumption of,
> "well, most of our 'customers' are not large scale, so lets ignore what
>   suits large scale".

Here, you're making the assumption that all large scale installations
would share /opt/csw.  I suspect this isn't the case, although please
correct me if you think otherwise. 

The point of this question is not to marginalize sites using CSW like
this, but to simply keep in perspective this size of the audience that
may or may not benefit from keeping 2 etc directories.

> Forgive me if I'm wrong, but your questions seem to come from a basis of,
> [I dont care about large installs, i just want to do whats easiest/tidiest
>  for me]

No, I do care.  While I think homing things under /etc/ is the better
choice, I don't want to discriminate against sites that share
/opt/csw.  I'm trying to argue that if we've already arrived at the
decision that /etc/opt/csw is the better _default_, then we're not
going to be discriminating any further by moving everything there.

> is that accurate?

No.

I think we'll end up agreeing to disagree here.  I'm in favour of
changing the default location, as are you.  Lets just carry forward
from this decision.  We can always look at things when more packages
are living in /etc/opt/csw anyway.

Thanks
-Ben
-- 
Ben Walton
Systems Programmer - CHASS
University of Toronto
C:416.407.5610 | W:416.978.4302

GPG Key Id: 8E89F6D2; Key Server: pgp.mit.edu
Contact me to arrange for a CAcert assurance meeting.
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