Hi Frank,
thanks a lot for trying to wrap the history of all these directories!
I wasn't aware of this non-obvious timeline with Debian having added
vendor-* directories before upstream last updated their search paths.
> The reason this doesn't get added on Debian right now is that we're
> still setting ‘--enable-site-fndir=/usr/local/share/zsh/site-functions’
> explicitly. Dropping this setting would change this.
I see.
> Since Debian's ‘vendor-*’ directory handling predates this by years,
> changing this, effectively adding a second path for the same purpose
> seems inelegant, since it adds redundancy where none is needed.
I agree here.
> This however, sucks:
>
> % apt-file search usr/share/zsh/site-functions/ | wc -l
> 30
>
> Because that is thirty functions that will not work.
Ack.
> When we added the ‘vendor-*’ stuff, we filed bug reports for packages
> that tried this, because even back then, it wouldn't have worked,
> because site-functions always was in /usr/local with Debian's zsh.
>
> That resulted in this:
>
> % apt-file search vendor-completions | wc -l
> 166
This is clearly the majority. (IMHO) Good.
> I am not sure if there's an elegant way to resolve this, because the
> ‘vendor-*’ directories are the documented way for zsh packages to add
> functions for more than a decade. I don't think dropping them is a good
> idea, because it would break backward compatibility. And as I said, just
> adding the second --prefix based site-functions entry would litter the
> system by added multiple destinations for the same purpose.
>
> Maybe there's a way to add a lintian check for the installation path of
> zsh function files in Debian packages.
Good idea! I can work on this.
> With that, we could add the prefix based site-functions directory,
> but deprecate its use.
Ack, that thought came to me also after having read your mail
half-through. It though has the danger that some so far not active
plugins will suddenly start to work. So we add least need to
debian/zsh.bug-script.
Currenty it only checks for packages that ship files in
/usr/share/zsh/vendor-completions/ and
/usr/share/zsh/vendor-functions/.
> That way, packages that disrespect the zsh package's policy still
> work, while keeping the possibility of a clean system, in case all
> package adhere to the policy. We could file a bunch of bugs for the
> packages that are currently using /usr/share/zsh/site-functions
> right now.
Debian prefers lintian warnings over mass bug filing. Mass bug filing
needs to be discussed on the debian-devel mailing list first.
What I now still wonder to (hopefully) address Joey's issue:
Is there a way to build the Debian zsh (respectively probably the
zsh-dev) package in a way so that locally installed Zsh extensions get
cleanly installed into /usr/local/ while Debian packages still install
stuff to /usr/ (preferably these vendor-* directories)?
I wonder if something like a dh_zsh helper could help here (i.e. for
the vendor-* directory part) as well.
Regards, Axel
--
,''`. | Axel Beckert <a...@debian.org>, https://people.debian.org/~abe/
: :' : | Debian Developer, ftp.ch.debian.org Admin
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