Summary/Minutes for today's FESCo meeting (2012-12-19)

[Ralf Corsepius]

On 12/21/2012 06:36 AM, Matthew Garrett wrote:
> On Fri, Dec 21, 2012 at 06:09:10AM +0100, Ralf Corsepius wrote:
>> On 12/21/2012 05:54 AM, Matthew Garrett wrote:
>>> On Fri, Dec 21, 2012 at 05:38:17AM +0100, Ralf Corsepius wrote:
>>>
>>>> I disagree. systemd simply hasn't taken libexecdir into account in
>>>> its design and now is trying to propagate their oversight/mistake as
>>>> "standard" instead of making their works compliant with _our_
>>>> distro's demands.
>>>
>>> libexec doesn't exist in any published version of the FHS,
>>
>> FHS != GCS
>>
>> http://www.gnu.org/prep/standards/standards.html#Directory-Variables
>>
>> IIRC, it's around there for at approx 20 years.
>
> So?

Next the FHS, it is one of the fundamental "standards", which define the 
basis of all packaging works on Linux/GNU and thus also the FPG.

>>> and even the
>>> draft of 3.0 makes it clear that it's optional.
>> We all know about the strong positions of the FHS. It is the least
>> common denominator of all distros and deliberately weakly formulated
>> ;)
>>
>>> Our use of libexec is
>>> non-standard,
>>
>> C.f above. I disagree.
>
> The GCS describe the behaviour of code written to the GCS, nothing
> more. The majority of the software we ship doesn't conform to them.

I disagree again. Most packages silently conform its path conventions, 
only few don't and only few explicitly exploit it.

>>> not systemd's use of lib.
>>
>> I disagree again. systemd is in its infancy and needs to do its
>> homework. As I see it, like many other works, they simply did not
>> take the GCS and the side-effects of multi-arching into account.
>
> They're not a GNU project, and so there's no reason for them to follow
> the GCS.
Sure, but there is hardly any reason for a package to not adopt it.

If systemd was an arbitrary package, it hardly wouldn't have an 
alternative to adapt to it, because it in its current shape violates the 
FPG.

> There's also no reason for it to support multiarch - you're
> never going to have two copies of systemd installed simultaneously.

Agreed, it's unlikely to happen you'll run 2 in parallel, but you'll 
never know. It would not be the first project, who refused to apply 
libexecdir until they suddenly could not avoid it for technical reasons.

Ralf