Re: Changing the defaults for --localstatedir and --sysconfdir?

[Vagrant Cascadian via "Development of GNU Guix and the GNU System distribution." <guix-devel@gnu.org>]

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On 2024-05-02, Janneke Nieuwenhuizen wrote:
> Ludovic Courtès writes:
>
>> Richard Sent <richard@freakingpenguin.com> skribis:
>>
>>> As everyone who's built Guix from source knows, when running ./configure
>>> on a system with an existing Guix installation you must remember to
>>> specify --localstatedir=/var and --sysconfdir=/etc. I think we should
>>> consider whether those variables should default to those values.
>>
>> I think it would make sense.
>>
>> Before I advocated that we should preferably stick to the GNU standards
>> and have users make informed choices (that’s how we ended up with the
>> ‘GUIX_CHECK_LOCALSTATEDIR’ macro that warns users but lets them
>> explicitly pass ‘--localstatedir’.)
>>
>> That was 8 years ago though (eight!).  At this point I think defaulting
>> to /var and /etc would do more good than harm.
>>
>> What do others think?
>
> It would be certainly convenient for many us but there should probably a
> warning or an error? (cc: @Vagrant) when not on Guix System?

I think /var and /etc would be saner defaults from Debian's perspective
for --localstatedir and --sysconfdir.

That said, all my workflows for passing this are either building the
Debian package (for which it explicitly passes /var and /etc) and
building guix for use with "./pre-inst-env guix ..." for both of those
use cases seem /var and /etc on my systems.

I am not sure what workflows might break by changing the defaults; some
people and systems still use /usr/local for locally built software, such
as FreeBSD ports and similar systems. Not sure how relevent they are to
guix at this point, at least...


live well,
  vagrant

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