Suggestion: Goal towards a cleanlinks compliant Ubuntu.

[Andrew Jorgensen]

I hate to object vocally but I must say that I've been using Linux
(and administering Linux and Unix servers) for 8 years and I've never
had a problem that turned out to be caused by symlinks.  It seems to
me that bad practices must be to blame for any problems you may have
experienced.  Not to imply that it was your fault, but that perhaps a
package maintainer or other engineer had misconceptions about how
symlinks should be used or was simply sloppy.

Perhaps you refer to the alternatives system when you talk of Ubuntu
making up it's own rules and then putting symlinks in the standard
places.  If so there are very good reasons why a distribution like
Debian (though perhaps not as much Ubuntu) would want to make use of
such a system.

There are standards about where files should live and all the major
distros try to follow those standards: http://www.pathname.com/fhs/

On 12/22/06, mikecorn <mikecorn at t-online.de> wrote:
>
>  Symlinks are generally a disaster. They should either be made bulletproof
> (automatically deleted when target is deleted), or eliminated. Someone long
> ago thought that giving many names to one file was a good idea. It was not.
> It only compensated for, and contributed to, the directory and file chaos in
> Unix/Linux. Ubuntu has made its own contribution by making up its own rules
> about where to place some files, and then adding symlinks in the standard
> places. Did I just use the word "standard"? What standard?
>
>
>  Joel Bryan Juliano wrote:
> On 12/22/06, Andrew Jorgensen <andrew.jorgensen at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > On 12/21/06, Joel Bryan Juliano <joelbryan.juliano at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > All Ubuntu applications should create directories that it needs, when it
> > > doesn't exists. Use locate function to search for a specific file and
> > > directories, and not rely on symbolic links.
> >
> > I'm curious what evidence you have that searching for a file is better
> > than using a symlink.
> >
> > Thanks,
> > Andrew Jorgensen
> >
>
>  searching for a file using locate is better, because it doesn't depends too
> much on a static system, nowadays, systems are dynamically changing,
> upgrades, installations makes the system changes alot.
>  It's an approach towards system scalability, in terms of architecture,
> platform, etc.
>
>  Regards,
>  Joel
>
>  --
>  Carpe Diem