On Thu, Aug 17, Franck Bui wrote:
On 8/12/23 09:01, Olaf Hering wrote:
Fri, 11 Aug 2023 18:40:44 +0200 Franck Bui
: - at installation, systemd packages will stop installing (empty/template) main configuration files and instead users will find the templates in drop-in directories (such as /etc/systemd/*.conf.d/50-{local,main,xxx}.conf, exact filename to be defined).
systemd is well documented, systemd.directives(7) is one potential entry point.
Please stop polluting /etc with empty and rpm-owned configuration files.
That would be the simplest way to switch to drop-in files only from a packager POV.
However I think that a lot of users would be confused by the fact that the main config files are missing. And even worse would be tempted to reintroduce them when they would need to override the defaults as the use of drop-ins is not wide spread yet.
I disagree. Other tools did that in the past, too (most prominent one: Linux-PAM). It did take some time until people did start learning, but in the end it was quite easy. Much simpler then having the pain to update this config files later.
The advantages of shipping /etc/systemd/*.conf.d/50-local.conf are:
- it implicitly teaches users to use a drop-in file to override defaults
If they are not aware of drop-ins they will follow the search engine hits and create the main config files again.
- it list all config options and their default in a concise form (as pointed out by Martin) which is convenient.
This is not convenient, this is the major pain for updates. Everytime, a config changes upstram and an admin made a local change, we will either have rpmsave or rpmnew files, which makes the whole thing void and all advantages are gone. And you will never get this cleaned up again.
So I would still be tempted to ship the "template" drop-ins at least for now and make them go away in the future when drop-ins will be common practice. That would be a more user-friendly transition IMHO.
Sorry, but with todays RPM you will never get rid of them again, we have enough other packages with exactly the same problem. Don't repeat all the mistakes we made in the past because somebody wrongly claims "it's more user friendly", in the end it is not. But learn from it and make it better. Thorsten -- Thorsten Kukuk, Distinguished Engineer, Senior Architect, Future Technologies SUSE Software Solutions Germany GmbH, Frankenstraße 146, 90461 Nuernberg, Germany Managing Director: Ivo Totev, Andrew McDonald, Werner Knoblich (HRB 36809, AG Nürnberg)