Return of config files to ^/etc

[Will Andrews]

On Wed, Feb 19, 2020 at 8:02 AM Warner Losh <imp at bsdimp.com> wrote:

>
> Right. The files don't need to move from the original /etc to do this, and
> never did need to move. so this is not an argument against moving them back.
>

This was just the background.

Since neither of these features strictly depends on where these files live
> in the tree, this advantage doesn't go away.
>

But not new people, who in most cases are used to the standard that is
followed by everything else (including everything installed by ports):
config files with the code that reads it.  That's why ^/etc is
idiosyncratic.

And people are used to it. They don't know where everything has moved and
> waste a lot of time finding stuff moved to a new, arbitrary location.
>

This seems to be the primary argument made for ^/etc: "that's the way it's
always been done, so it must be right."  I can think of a lot of things
that are done a certain way primarily because of that argument.  I'm sure
I'm not alone.

The new locations are actually less "arbitrary" (to use your word) than
^/etc, since the config files are co-located with the code that reads
them.  This is nice for source management: there's no need to look in or
manage other directories for related files like the default configuration.
It is a *source* tree, after all.

Here's a question: why are config files special?  Why don't we store all
man pages in ^/share/man/manX, instead of colocating them with their source
files?

-- 
wca