Re: [gentoo-dev] Default Ebuild behaviour

[Ciaran McCreesh <ciaranm@gentoo.org>]

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On Tue, 31 Jan 2006 14:03:38 +0000 "Benjamin Smee (strerror)"
<strerror@gentoo.org> wrote:
| On Tuesday 31 January 2006 12:31, Ciaran McCreesh wrote:
| > See, you're not really taking into account the cost of sticking
| > files in /etc. For packages where an etc entry is low cost, it's
| > already done. 
| 
| What is the "cost" you are referring to specifically? I think I know
| but I'd like a specific definition.

1. Management. For example, handling etc-update.

2. Administration. Everything in /etc must be checked and covered by
backup policies and the like. Unless you're a home user, in which case
you probably just hope for the best...

3. Performance. Entries in /etc can have a serious performance impact.
The easy example is bash completion, which can be reaaallllly slow if
you have a few hundred entries. Less obvious examples are cron entries
for things like updatedb -- if you have a few dozen chroots and svn
checkouts of large projects, updatedb can take a very long time and eat
a lot of battery power.

| Agreed, the question then though is how to manage it. Is USE the
| right way? Given that there will always be a couple of exceptions, is
| it not reasonable to expect that all packages that install cron
| entries do it in a consistant manner?

Not really. For some packages, cron files must always be installed for
proper operation. For some packages, cron files are strictly optional
extras for features that many users will not want. For many it's
somewhere in between. For packages in the first group, a USE flag is
silly. For packages in the second group, not using a USE flag is silly.
For the in-between cases, that's one of those areas where the ebuild
maintainer has to make an educated decision.

-- 
Ciaran McCreesh : Gentoo Developer (King of all Londinium)
Mail            : ciaranm at gentoo.org
Web             : http://dev.gentoo.org/~ciaranm


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