[csw-maintainers] Migrating config files from /opt/csw/etc to /etc/opt/csw during package update

[Maciej (Matchek) Blizinski]

On Thu, Sep 17, 2009 at 12:08 PM, Sebastian Kayser <skayser at opencsw.org> wrote:
> My concern with simply placing symlinks in /etc is that it doesn't reduce
> the clutter that i feel we have today. Some files reside in /opt others in
> /etc.

I support that, I agree that one place for configuration is better
then two places. (One might argue that creating /opt/csw/etc was
unnecessary, as there already was /etc. I'd be personally happier with
everything sitting in /etc as nature intended.)

> I know there is the definition about what has to go into
> /etc/opt/csw and what has to go into /opt/csw/etc, but i see how this
> confuses people (including me).

It's one of the things that in practice you're always forced to "just
learn" and get over. Eradicating /opt/csw/etc would be great, but I
don't think it's happening in foreseeable future. But we can do a lot
to ease the pain by installing signposts in appropriate places.

> My preference would be to have it all in /etc, i.e. move config files over.

Or, in the case of shared /opt, copy them or link them (to leave them shared).

> To not break with setup like yours, couldn't we introduce a csw.conf
> variable that would indicate such a setup? cswclassutils scripts running
> in such an environment would know that they need to behave different.

What would be the cases and how would they be handled? I guess the
cases could be:

shared /opt => link files
local /opt => move files

> This way we could focus on having a simple baseline that works with the
> traditional "one host" (or "full root zone") setup and treat special
> setups in a special way

That's a possibility; it would be good to indicate during
installation, that such configuration variable is needed.

> (i don't feel we can fully address all of them
> with one single approach). I haven't thought that through completely, but
> it might be an alternative approach. Might also turn out to be even more
> complex.

Perhaps, it's good to have many eyeballs look at the issue.

In the meantime, Sebastian and I have added a section on incentives to
move to /etct/opt/csw:
http://wiki.opencsw.org/configuration-directory-migration

Maciej