Re: [gentoo-dev] [RFC] Revisiting GLEP 81 (acct-*) policies (reviews, cross-distro syncing)

[Rich Freeman <rich0@gentoo.org>]

On Tue, Dec 10, 2019 at 12:44 AM Joonas Niilola <juippis@gentoo.org> wrote:
>
> Honestly I'd say just put -1 on all acct- packages then let sys admins
> modify them locally to whatever they need. I feel like this whole GLEP
> just serves the minority while making many other contributors uneasy.
>

I think we're worrying far too much about people with decade-old
installs.  Just come up with a reasonable set of defaults and as long
as it can adapt to whatever is already in /etc/passwd we're fine.

Having UIDs chosen completely at random seems fairly non-optimal.
Suppose you're building containers/etc and then bind-mounting in
persistent storage (/var/lib/mysql and so on).  Wouldn't it be nice if
the default were that mysql would get the same UID on every build?  I
guess you could provide an initial /etc/passwd on every fresh build
but it just seems like an extra step.

This isn't about serving the minority so much as not letting the
perfect be the enemy of the good.  Yes, there are reasons why GLEP 81
won't be perfect.  That doesn't mean that it isn't a good idea...

-- 
Rich