[fhs-discuss] games/ as a separate directory

[Richard Hartmann]

On Tue, May 17, 2011 at 09:12, Steve Langasek <vorlon at debian.org> wrote:

> I would note here that the aforementioned Debian developers don't seem to
> have been so bothered by the current separation as to propose an amendment
> to Debian policy overriding this part of the FHS.

Correct, which is why it was taken here.


> Others in this thread have noted reasons why it's useful to keep a
> separation (root security; backup policies).  I see no overriding reason to
> change the FHS in this regard.

I still don't buy the security argument. There are hundreds of
binaries root should not run. What makes games different? Are they
inherently insecure or evil? They were installed by root, after all.
Else, they would not be in his $PATH.

While the backup argument is (was?) valid to some extent due to disk
constraints, the default purpose of a backup is to restore a system to
its state before disaster struck. The installed games are part of
that. What makes games inherently different from anything else? If you
don't want to back up some large data sets, define excludes. But
separating games from the rest of the system seems arbitrary, archaic
and overcomplicated, to me.
_Or_ we would need to come up with a better system of classification
and introduce a _lot_ more options. The problem with that is that it
does not scale unless symlinks/hardlinks are abused as a one-level
classification does not scale [1]. Which is why tags were introduced.
The FS pendant to tags are links. Not an option.


Richard

[1] http://packages.debian.org/unstable/