[Rpm-maint] RFC: SUSE/openSUSE's proposed relocation of /var/lib/rpm

[Colin Walters]

On Thu, Oct 12, 2017, at 07:18 AM, Panu Matilainen wrote:
> 
> Rpm is not the only data of this kind, I can think of at least one other 
> similar need (SWID) and almost certainly there are more. Why not give 
> this data a place of its own? Something like
> 
> /usr/sysimage

Hm...creating a new subdirectory of /usr isn't something to do lightly;
for example in the FHS /usr/X11 is explicitly defined, but that's just
a legacy nowadays -  xorg has moved into /usr/lib and /usr/share just
like everything else.

Creating a new subdirectory of /usr seems to imply it's *really* special,
but...take the example of systemd unit files, which live in /usr/lib/systemd/system.
I could certainly imagine the systemd developers saying systemd unit
files are so critical to system operation that the deserve higher visibility, in
say /usr/systemd.
But they choose (IMO rightly) not to do that.   Don't get me wrong, I find
putting things like this in /usr/lib a little bit weird.  But it's not clear to me that
rpm is quite special enough to just do this right now.   Particularly not
without e.g. getting buy-in from say the dpkg/gentoo/arch/whatever maintainers
too right?