/etc/profile & /etc/profile.d/ (was: problems with XFree)

["Max Bowsher" <maxb at ukf dot net>]

As I understand it, the whole point of /etc/profile.d/ is to allow packages to
put their own startup scripts there and not modify /etc/profile - the underlying
reason being that package management generally does a good job of adding and
removing files, but changing them is fraught with difficulty.

> 2) Add two scripts, one for bash-style shells and one for c-shell-
> style   shells to /etc/profile.d/.  These scripts are processed by
> /etc/profile.  We would add this new scripts to an XFree86 package,
> probably XFree86-bin, and we would install these scripts via a
> post-install script if they were not already present (so we do not
> overwrite modifications).

Why not just install them normally? Is this not the whole point of profile.d ?

> Of all the arguments for/against the two methods, so far only one
> seems to be a sticking point that essentially decides how we will do
> this:
>
>    There is no guarantee that the sub-script in /etc/profile.d/ that
> adds /usr/X11R6/bin to the path will be executed before some other
> shell script, that may be added at a later date to /etc/profile.d/,
> that requires that the path to the X11R6 binaries already be set.  In
> order to allow other scripts in /etc/profile.d/ to assume that the
> path to the X11R6 binaries is known, we must set the path to the
> binaries in /etc/profile before the /etc/profile.d/ scripts are
> processed.

Can I just raise a point? If we named the script 00-XFree-path.sh, then wouldn't
the 00 prefix ensure that this script executed before any scripts with
first-character-alphabetic names? This seems to me the best way to solve this
problem, unless someone can show that this ordering is not necessarily so.

> I therefore throw my vote 100% behind modifying the /etc/profile
> script to add /usr/X11R6/bin to the path, if that directory exists.

I really don't think we should be messing with /etc/profile for this kind of
thing. This is the raison d'être of /etc/profile.d/ .

> Robert Collins had said something about pulling the /etc/profile
> script out of setup.exe and having it installed as a stand-alone
> package.  Was this the task that two people had volunteered for?  If
> so, shall we wait until this package is made before we propose any
> changes to /etc/profile, or should we go ahead and submit a patch for
> the /etc/profile that is distributed with setup.exe now?

Not _with_. _In_.

> Hopefully I haven't confused anything here.  I have not commented
> until now because I had no idea what was going on with all of this
> profile[.d] stuff, but I think I have a pretty good grasp of it now.

Actually, that was a pretty useful synopsis of the current situation.

> Harold

Max.