libexec in history [was Re: Summary/Minutes for today's FESCo meeting (2012-12-19)]

[Matthew Miller]

On Thu, Dec 20, 2012 at 06:54:24PM -0800, Adam Williamson wrote:
> It seemed perfectly clear from context that what Lennart was arguing is
> that the guidelines should be changed and we should stop using
> this /usr/libexec directory which no-one outside of RH-derived distros
> has adopted, and which is thus a barrier to cross-distro operation of
> projects like systemd.

It's worth knowing the history here. Libexec isn't completely out of the
blue -- it comes from GNU. For whatever reason, FHS was resistant to
accepting libexec (but somewhat ironically!) the BSDs picked it up, and as I
understand it, liked it so much that it's one of the reasons the FHS failed
to become more than a Linux standard.

Debian discussed following Red Hat / Fedora with libexec, but decided that
the way to go about doing that was to work upstream to change the FHS. But,
the FHS process was pretty much stalled and directionless at that point, so
nothing went anywhere -- not on the merits of the proposal, but just because
of the state of that project.

There's been a reason attempt to revive the FHS under the aegis of the Linux
Foundation, and there's a FHS 3.0 draft, which, in fact, includes libexec.
http://www.linuxbase.org/betaspecs/fhs/fhs/ch04s07.html

Although the Debian conversation was long ago, what I remember is a general
agreement that it was a good idea but that there was a process to go
through. I won't put myself in the prediction business here, but I wouldn't
be _surprised_ if Debian and Ubuntu adopt libexec if FHS 3.0 ever happens.


-- 
Matthew Miller  ☁☁☁  Fedora Cloud Architect  ☁☁☁  <mattdm at fedoraproject.org>