Re: [RFC] User Accesable Filesystem Hierarchy Standard

Scripsit Nicolas Mailhot <[email protected]>
> Le sam, 27/03/2004 à 17:34 -0500, Gary L Greene Jr a ecrit :

> > http://www.csis.gvsu.edu/~abreschm/uafhs/

> From a usability POW hidden files (and directories) are very bad.
> I must admit I'm a bit horrified by the number of new hidden roots
> you're suggesting to create

I concur. Apart from the problem that there are many of them, it is a
significant technical problem that the way they are formed is not
compatible with the --prefix interface of legacy configure
scripts. Thus, even if there is a ~/.bin and a ~/.share, it is not
easy for a user to download a tarball and easily get something to
*install* in them. (Well, perhaps the problem is for the one who
packages some software for others to install in home dirs, but it is a
problem nevertheless).

Something like ~/$FOO/{etc,bin,lib,share,include} for some value of
$FOO, would have a better chance of taking flight.

> 2. at this point you can probably not hide them since they won't result
> in too much clutter

I'd tend to think that even one name that is not dotted is too much
clutter. There's a strong unix tradition that *any* name in ~ that
does not begin with a dot should belong to the user alone.

Perhaps FOO="..."?

> 3. do not try to keep current dotfiles/dotdirs in your spec but move
> them to your clean file layout

By the way, the draft's distinction between .etc and .config is
strange and un-FHS-like. In FHS, /etc is for the system administrator
to change; sets of defaults that are never meant to be changed by the
sysadm (resp. user) belong in [/usr]/share rather than /etc.

The /home/shared part of the proposal is at once too general and not
general enough. Most computers who have more than one user to share
data between tend to have *many* users, so one would quickly want a
way to share software between smaller sets of users (I may trust that
software installed by Tom and Jennifer is not intentionally trojaned,
but there is no way that I will put into my $PATH a directory where
Charles from accounting has write rights).

-- 
Henning Makholm                        "Kurt er den eneste jeg kender der er
                           *dum* nok til at gå i *ring* på et jernbanespor."