Re: sharedlocalstate default - does anybody use this?

[Russ Allbery]

"Mariano, Adrian V." <address@hidden> writes:

> So what's the correct practice for my package?  Should I use
> sharedstatedir and not worry about it resolving to a strange default
> path because mostly it will get changed by site defaults?

Interestingly, Debian's standard tool for this doesn't override
sharedstatedir, so this will create a surprising directory the first time
the maintainer builds it (and then they'll investigate and presumably fix
it by passing in the right configure flag).  That also probably indicates
that it's very rarely used.  I think most people use localstatedir for
this sort of file, since the distinction between sharedstatedir and
localstatedir only matters for models of software installation that are
now almost extinct.

That said, I agree that it's still perfectly fine to use it.  The lack of
an override is a bug in debhelper, and units may be the prompt for us to
fix it.  :)  (Debian will almost certainly just point sharedstatedir at
the same directory as localstatedir.)

-- 
Russ Allbery (address@hidden)              <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>