Removal of /etc/skel, your opinions please

[Brooks Davis]

On Fri, Nov 30, 2007 at 12:44:18PM +0000, Robert Watson wrote:
> On Fri, 30 Nov 2007, Alexander Leidinger wrote:
> 
>> Quoting Remko Lodder <remko at FreeBSD.org> (from Fri, 30 Nov 2007 08:25:30 
>> +0100 (CET)):
>> 
>>> On Thu, November 29, 2007 10:47 am, Alexander Leidinger wrote:
>>>> Quoting Remko Lodder <remko at FreeBSD.org> (from Wed, 28 Nov 2007
>>>> 22:21:06 +0100):
>>>>> Dear arch@ members,
>>>>> I would like to remove /etc/skel from the BSD.root.dist mtree file 
>>>>> since it is no longer being used and I would like to remove unused 
>>>>> items.
>> 
>>>> Not an objection, just something to think about: Do we want to deprecate 
>>>> the use of "adduser -k /etc/skel"? I know you said you just want to 
>>>> remove the directory, and every admin is allowed to create it again, but 
>>>> by removing the directory from the mtree file, we give a signal into the 
>>>> direction of deprecation.
>> 
>>> You do have a point there actually :-), what we can do in the install 
>>> phase (initially "make distribution", later on when the system is already 
>>> installed, manage this through "mergemaster") is install all files from 
>>> /usr/share/skel to /etc/skel and actually use it.
>>> If we dont want to do that, why should we keep on carrying the directory 
>>> then?
>> 
>> I have a local patch to adduser which adds /usr/local/share/skel (so 2 
>> directories are used by default). Now I think it may be better to change 
>> this to use /etc/skel instead, and to do it in a way that /etc/skel 
>> overrides /usr/share/skel. Looks more usable to me. What do you think?
> 
> Sounds like a quite reasonable argument could be made for having 
> mergemaster install and manage /etc/skel so that when sites customize 
> /etc/skel, mergemaster can be used to manage those customizations over 
> time. Alternatively, mergemaster could manage /usr/share/skel.

I think that in addition to having "make distribution" populate /etc/skel
we should change useradd to take files from there instead of or
in addition to /usr/share/skel (I prefer "instead of" because at least two
of the files in /usr/share/skel are useless for the 99.999% of unix
users who don't read their mail with main(1)).

-- Brooks

[0] I've met one person who used main(1) with serious intent.
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