[fhs-discuss] games/ as a separate directory

Jeff Licquia licquia at linuxfoundation.org
Thu May 5 09:39:05 PDT 2011


On 05/05/2011 04:27 AM, Richard Hartmann wrote:
> 1) How is this to be interpreted?
>
>> The following directories, or symbolic links to directories, must be
>> in /usr/ share, if the corresponding subsystem is installed:
> [...]
>> games     Static data files for /usr/games (optional)
>
> Possible interpretations include
>
> a) "/usr/games is optional when games are installed"
> b) "/usr/games must be created if there are any games installed"
> c) "/usr/games must be created _and used_ if there are any games installed"
>
> In any case, the wording of this section should probably be improved.

I agree; there's some ambiguity here.  Oddly, /usr/games is not 
referenced anywhere else in the current spec.  I don't think it's wrong 
to install games to /usr/bin (and the specification definitely does not 
forbid it), so maybe we want to just drop references to /usr/games, or 
deprecate it.

The mentions of /usr/share/games and /usr/lib/games seem a bit like 
micro-management to me.  Certainly, they should not be disallowed, but 
what's wrong with /usr/share/[mygame] vs. /usr/share/games/[mygame]?

I think I'd want to expand the comment about writeable game data to be 
true across the board, not just for games.  Writeable stuff should go in 
/var, and non-writeable data should go in /usr/share (or /usr/lib if 
it's arch-specific).

> 2) Is this section going to change? Some people within Debian don't
> see the use of maintaining this separation (any more). While this
> rationale makes sense:
>
>>      Rationale: /var/games has been given a hierarchy of its own,
>> rather than leaving it merged in with the old /var/lib as in release 1.2. The
>> separation allows local control of backup strategies,
>> permissions, and disk usage, as well as allowing inter-host sharing and reducing clutter
>> in /var/ lib. Additionally, /var/games is the path traditionally used
>> by BSD.
>
> and while the other separate directories like dict/, doc/, etc clearly
> point to factoring out non-essential stuff into different directories,
> the actual selection seems arbitrary, at best. There is a nls/ for
> native language support. Something I never even heard of and which
> returns _zero_ results when searching all Debian packages. But there
> is no media/ for mplayer, ffmpeg, etc. There is no wallpapers/ even
> though it's a very well established directory. There is no X/, there
> is no graphics/ for The GIMP, digicam, etc. I could continue this list
> with more or less arbitrary names, but I think I made my point.

Yes, I agree that we should probably look at the list of subdirectories 
in /var in general.  The case for /var/games is stronger, though, as 
mentioned in the mailing list post you linked; the convention of setting 
up score files and the like there, along with some security via setgid 
games or some such, is well established.

But if there are folks who'd like to get rid of /var/games, send them on 
to us; we'd love to hear their rationale.

As for the rest, I'm not a fan of suggesting anything in general unless 
it has wide distro use already or has wide support in distros for adding 
it, so I don't know that we're ready for /var/media, /var/wallpapers, etc.

-- 
Jeff Licquia
The Linux Foundation
+1 (317) 915-7441
licquia at linuxfoundation.org

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