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

[Toshio Kuratomi]

On Fri, Dec 21, 2012 at 10:33:27AM -0800, Adam Williamson wrote:
> On Fri, 2012-12-21 at 12:30 -0500, Matthew Miller wrote:
> > On Thu, Dec 20, 2012 at 09:16:00PM -0800, Adam Williamson wrote:
> > > I've never seen any distro take any notice of this standard whatsoever.
> > 
> > Well, if you don't count Red Hat Linux, Fedora, and Red Hat Enterprise
> > Linux....
> 
> I should probably have been more precise about that, but what I meant
> was this: I've been following this list for several years now and not
> once in any of the many and colorful arguments we have about path names
> and locations do I recall anyone citing this GNU filesystem 'standard'.
>
> I don't recall it coming up once in the /usr move saga, for instance.
>
Just a note -- I try to mention the GNU Coding Standards everytime libexec
has come up in the context of not being standardized.  I may not catch each
and every thread that mentions libexec because it's not always relevant to
the discussion (if the discussion isn't about libexec in standards).  No
sense bringing the same discussion up repeatedly once the posters appear to
remember it ;-)  (And sometimes, I just don't see a post where it would make
sense to add a mention of the GNU Coding Standards... especially if I'm
slogging through an email backlog after a vacation or conference ;-)

The GNU Coding Standards mention even made it into one of the UsrMove
threads.  I think you found that in your google search but just neglected to
clearly articulate it (and of course, I probably didn't call enough
attention to it since I've posted about the relation before and they are
mentioned in the Filesystem Layout section of the Packaging Guidelines).

http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/devel/2012-February/163024.html

> 
> An archive search shows I'm slightly wrong, but not very much so:
> 
> https://www.google.ca/search?q="gnu coding standards"+site%3Ahttps%3A%2F
> %2Flists.fedoraproject.org%2Fpipermail%2Fdevel
> 
> it appears to have been cited in about 10 threads since 2004. And most
> of those in a 'it's an interesting reference but nothing we have to
> follow' sort of way. Indeed, in an earlier discussion on this topic,
> Toshio wrote explicitly that we don't consider GCS as canonical:
> 
> "to be clear the GNU coding standards are not definitive for Fedora like
> the FHS is at this time; I'm including the quotation to show what
> current best practices are in this regard"
> 
> https://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/devel/2011-June/152343.html

<nod>  Although your use of "canonical" above is open to interpretation (In
retrospect, I suppose that "definitive" is also).  I'd apply the word
"canonical" for Fedora to be what's written in the Fedora Packaging
Guidelines.  In turn, the Packaging Guidelines consider the FHS to be the
foundation of where files belong on the filesystems with a few tweaks that
are explicitly mentioned in the Packaging Guidelines.  The tweak for libexec
was drawn from the GNU Coding Standards.  Many of the other paths in the FHS
are listed in the GNU Coding Standards and serve the same purpose in both
documents so you can sometimes read the GNU Coding Standards for a broader
understanding of why the placement of a particular type of file in
a particular path is appropriate.  But if you want to base a decision on
something that's in the GUN Coding Standard but not in the FHS or Packaging
Guidelines, then you should be taking it to the FPC for them to evaluate
whether to add it to the Fedora Packaging Guidelines as a new
tweak/exception to the general "follow FHS" rule.


> 
> In passing, a post from Toshio back in February explains rather more
> clearly than anything in this thread why systemd unit files shouldn't go
> in libexec anyway, and so why this whole side-thread is kind of
> irrelevant:
> 
> "So I have to admit here that I have no idea why systemd is using
> $libexecdir here.  The definition of libexecdir does not support the
> storing of unit files...unit files are declarative, not executable.  It
> sounds like upstream systemd wants to use $(exec_prefix)/lib/systemd for
> the unit files and is attempting to shoehorn those into libexecdir
> because some distros set libexecdir to ${exec_prefix}/lib whereas some
> distros on some arches set libdir to ${exec_prefix}lib64  This is
> incorrect use of libexecdir.  They should just use ${exec_prefix}/lib if
> that is the place that makes the most sense."
> 
> https://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/devel/2012-February/163024.html
>
Yep, thanks for finding that quote.  I'm not sure what variable systemd 
currently using in its build scripts but that still applies here.

-Toshio
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