On Thu, Mar 29, 2018 at 11:57:06AM -0400, Alec Warner wrote: > On Thu, Mar 29, 2018 at 11:47 AM, Michael Orlitzky wrote: > > > On 03/29/2018 11:28 AM, Alec Warner wrote: > > > > > > Is there any particular reason we need to remove them? > > > > > > > The PMS says that empty directories are undefined, so the portage > > behavior of installing them and leaving them alone leads to > > incompatibilities. Ebuilds rely on the portage behavior, and if another > > PM (within its rights) deletes them, then the package breaks with the > > non-portage PM. > > > > > So we could simply change the PMS to keep the empty directories? > > Why is removing them *better* is my question. Right, I am not aware why PMS has left this explicitly undefined. Have read through https://bugs.gentoo.org/644366 but there's no hint on why, too. I appreciate mjo's proposal. I think it would be good for ebuild maintainer to have a switch "empty dirs are ok by default". The disagreement seems to be based on a prejudice and distrust towards upstreams' build systems.