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

[Chris Adams]

Once upon a time, Bill Nottingham <notting at redhat.com> said:
> In any case, I agree - my proposal was that packages that use
> non-multilibbed helper binaries should be free to put them in *one of*
> $prefix/lib or $prefix/libexec, as long as they remain consistent.

As a sys admin (and an OCD one at that), I'd prefer to keep "things that
are run" separate from other stuff.  Except when they are multi-lib, I
think executables should be kept out of lib/ or lib64/; that's exactly
what libexec/ is for.

There used to be (not just talking about Linux) bunches of executables
all over the place (/lib and /usr/lib, /etc, and so on), but they have
moved to more appropriate places (such as sbin/ directories) over the
years (except for /usr/lib/sendmail, which apparently will live forever,
but at least it is just a symlink now).  IMHO putting executables in
lib/ or lib64/ is a regression to the past.

Another package that has always seemed odd to me is mailman; why are all
the commands (that are expected to be run from the command line, not
just as internal helpers) in /usr/lib/mailman/bin?
-- 
Chris Adams <cmadams at hiwaay.net>
Systems and Network Administrator - HiWAAY Internet Services
I don't speak for anybody but myself - that's enough trouble.