On 21.09.05, Faré wrote:
On 9/21/05, René van Bevern <rvb@progn.org> wrote:
On 21.09.05, Faré wrote:
Hi Faré,
The only possible downside is having to walk /etc/passwd to locate all the places where to purge the cache, if you wish to do such thing.
No, it is the plain and true evil for package maintainer scripts to delete or modify files in users' home directories. It's the user's personal space and you never know what he uses ~/.cache for. The system should never modify the home directory and I do not know of one single package that does.
Hi Faré,
A lot of packages install stuff in the user directory.
I doubt that any package does this.
Mozilla, Gimp, OpenOffice, KDE, GNOME, etc., will all create their own directories under ~/.<foo> and install a shitload of crap.
But this is done by the applications themselves and not by packages or their maintainer scripts -- and not for all home directories they can find. It's up to each user if that happens or not.
Sometimes, their offer to upgrade from a previous version, and optionally offer to delete cruft from previous versions.
That is fine. The application themselves can offer transitions from previous versions. But a maintainer script in a package that runs through the home directory of all users to delete files is not fine. The applications *offer* it, it's in the user's hands what happens finally. This would not be the case if a maintainer script traversed all home directories to delete caches.
Modifying users' directories is something done casually.
Not by packages or their scripts and not without user interaction. It's dangerous. René