Re: rc & runsystem

[Roland McGrath]

> I agree with Roland that `make install' is not a package manager nor
> should we pretend that it is.  On the other hand, the files we are
> talking about are basically templates that a package manager would
> modify and if we consider them as templates then I think not
> installing them is fine.  (Hence, we just provide them as samples for
> package maintainers.)

That is a reasonable way to look at it.  However, it should still be the
case that from "make install" you get everything needed for a vanilla
system to actually work normally.  Configuration files can be missing, but
runsystem cannot, and nor can rc if the vanilla runsystem is used.

> Roland's statement also begs the question: what is the purpose of
> `make install'?  If it is not a package manager (and hence not for
> users) then it is either for package maintainers or for developers.

It is for a vanilla install from scratch.  
If you do "make install prefix=/some/place", then you can boot /some/place.
It's what you'd expect package managers to use to populate their
install-root directory before they start munging it with packaging changes.

> Further, since we already have a policy, as Alfred pointed out, to not
> overwrite certain system configuration files, I think this supports
> the argument that rc and runsystem are eligible for special treatment.

They are not configuration files in the sense that motd and ttys are.  motd
is purely optional, and you want it solely in the case of a fresh vanilla
install when no higher-level stuff like your package manager is going to
provide it for you.  ttys is kind of optional, in that runttys will fail
without it but then you get the normal single-user shell.  Moreover, it's a
pure configuration file.  You would only want a new one to replace your old
one if the syntax changed or something.  runsystem and rc are part of the code.
They may be simple and stupid parts of the code that every packager wants
to replace and every hacker wants to tweak by hand.  But they are code.