[csw-maintainers] [policy] files/dirs in /var/opt/csw

[Philip Brown]

On Sat, Jan 1, 2011 at 9:33 AM, Ben Walton <bwalton at opencsw.org> wrote:
>...
> Currently, going forward, Phil is saying that packages shipping
> _files_ in /var/opt/csw will be blocked from release.  It should be
> noted that _directories_ are ok.  The rationale on this is that 'even
> a first level tech support could create directories if required.'
>
> The current backing decision on not shipping files in /var/opt/csw is
> centred around our support of a shared /opt/csw.  Please frame the
> discussion around this from the viewpoint of a shared /opt/csw as we
> have yet to slay that dragon.
>
> So: Who's for, who's against and why do you hold this position?

So, to give more details, and coming from the standpoint of,
"yes, we do support an nfs-shared, or otherwise replicated /opt/csw as
much as possible" ---

Consider a machine that is sitting somewhere, with just "/opt/csw".
Perhaps think of it as a fresh install, where an admin has duplicated
by some means, a new OS, and /opt/csw.
The original master may be offline. Or in another country. Or the new
machine may be off the net. Or in extreme, Large Organization cases,
"run by a different IT group".
So "just get it from the master" is not a good way to treat our users
in this situation.
We should give them an "easy to use" experience, starting from what
they have in /opt/csw

For *most* of our packages, no further work will be required; they
will just work.
For programs that normally are machine local, they will want setups
and configs in machine-local places such as /etc/opt/csw and
/var/opt/csw
Ideally, admins of such boxes would be able to set up the
machine-local configs in one of the following ways:
1. look in /opt/csw/share/[progname] for docs on configuring the software
2. look in /opt/csw/[progprefix] for docs/utils on configuring the software
3. run some kind of /opt/csw/(?)/bin/prog-first-setup utility to do the setup.

Most of our "requires local setup" packages, are *already compliant*
with this sort of thing.
Things such as apache, have documentation in /opt/csw/(*)/share/doc.
Mysql has things like /opt/csw/mysql5/share/mysql/my-small.cnf

So this is not some kind of 'big change', but mostly just a
formalization of what we already do in most cases.
And the cases where we dont already do this.. there are relatively
easy tweaks to adjust to this.
It probably didnt take Jake very long to put together that little
postinstall snippet he posted to the list for clamav, for example.