Arch Linux

See also this: http://bugs.archlinux.org/task/4766#comment10118

While the idea is sound, this is the second bug report from Mr Garbarini I've seen today and I have some advice: please cut the derogatory tone, it adds nothing to the information you're trying to provide.

as much i dont like the tone either, as i am at times anal like that too, i have to agree 100% with this bug report. one of the additions i remember clearly was the following:
mkdir -p var/{..,games}
#Allow setgid games to write scores:
chmod 775 ${startdir}/pkg/var/games
chown root:50 ${startdir}/pkg/var/games

in order for people who install gnome, and play games to get their scores written down an extra directory was added to this package cause it was considered an easy solution. isnt there a way for these kind of additions to be part of the actual packages that use them?
this package needs an overhaul, even despite that

Beyond the games change, can you further define "overhaul"? I have pending changes coming in the filesystem package (due to the 3.1 pacman release) and I would like to get them out of the way.

Well, after doing some reasearch i realised both slackware and crux treat this the same way. slack provides 2 packages. one that provides a directory tree (aaa_base) and the etc package which provides some etc conf files. crux provides a filesystem package like ours, which i guess has similar contents.
My way of thinking and approaching this might be totallly wrong here but just as an example: /var/lib/pacman is provided by filesystem but it is also created by pacman. Why create it two times?
The way i see it the filesystem package should provide a basic directory tree for / (bin,boot,..,var), any other needed directories inside them that are absolutely needed eg. some /var dirs and configuration files for /etc that provide a customisation for base packages.
But as i said before the way i appoach this might be totally off.
Last, is /etc/arch-release still needed? i remember some discussions at some previous time that it was only left there for some specific reason i seem not to remember at the moment. is the reason still valid?

/etc/arch-release is needed because a bunch of scripts (e.g. virtualbox installer) check for its existence to know that they're running on Arch. Its contents is not needed, however (scripts that use content of arch-release should be fixed).

Erm, so /var/lib/pacman we can get rid of. That's fine.

I feel that we should keep these config files in filesystem. It's a convenience package.

Also, I agree that games shouldn't be there, but how do we fix this globally? Where should this be moved to?

/var/lib/pacman/ and /var/cache/pacman/pkg/ can (should?) be dropped, as pacman takes care of that. Not sure if there are any other directories like this, but we shouldn't need them in filesystem.

I also believe filesystem should have no dependencies whatsoever to ensure it gets installed first- otherwise the package is useless as all dirs will have been created anyways (possibly with wrong permissions). I think a post_upgrade function is ok, but post_install should be eliminated and the coreutils and sh deps removed.

Finally, I think there have to be a few files present- I'm not sure where else you would put motd, issue, etc.

i never thought i could get anyone to agree with this. im quite shocked.
if you accept my logic then the same goes for /var/abs (part of abs) and probably most subdirectories of the directores lying in the root tree!
well , the /var/games dir was added to solve this bug http://bugs.archlinux.org/task/6912 . emacs also uses this dir but in contrast to gnome-games this dir is part of the package list.

well, the above goes at least for most dirs in /var. im not really sure if it applies to all. /usr/local most directories are needed (maybe games can be excluded too?). the man direcroties will be replaced as time goes by if all packages move to /usr/share/man. /usr/share/misc is used my mailx and file but included in filelist also. i dont know how far this can go to be honest

Well yes and no. At the very MINIMUM this package should contain the paths listed by the FHS, so as to have clear "ownership" of the directories

Adding Jan here: Jan, is it possible to stick the /var/games stuff in gnome-games?

/var/games is a normal FHS directory that should be created with root:games ownership and 775 permissions. gnome-games isn't the only package using these things (I recently converted maelstrom to use this location for highscores also).

Thanks Jan, that settles the issue for me. Should we add the 'games' group to the default /etc/passwd in this case?

it's aleady in /etc/group ;)

yes what JGC said is true. ive been reading the FHS for some time now. the only thing i found to be inconsistent was /media and /mnt. FHS mentions that the /media dir is for removable media such as floppy disks, cdroms and zip disks. and /mnt is for temporarily mounted filesystems. i dont know if that should be changed.
i guess the package is ok if u exclude that and /var/lib/pacman and /var/abs dirs, the already known manpage dirs location ofc, and as u said all conf files stay

Ah crap, I meant "group". Can has stupids plz?

In all seriousness, though, with games being acceptable under the FHS, the only really actionable stuff here is removing the pacman directories, is that correct?

i guess so. too much fuzz for nothing. at least im more familiar with the FHS now :-)