> On Tue, 8 December 2015, at 12:29 a.m., Rich Freeman <ri...@gentoo.org> wrote: >> >> It seems just a tad exotic to me, as I haven't used or needed it in over 10 >> years. > > You never run etc-update or dispatch-conf? If you do, you're using > it. You're just using its default configuration and not adding > directories to it.
That's like telling your grandma, "you don't know what DNS is? this is internet 101 - you use DNS all the time". I have not needed to add directories to CONFIG_PROTECT, or alter it in any way, in over 10 years of using Gentoo. >> Am I not correct in thinking that a /usr/local/whatever directory would work >> as I described previously? [1] > > Only if you patch the program in question to read the file there. Excuse me. I thought this was a standard thing, just as I have scripts in /usr/local/bin/ and a local Portage tree in /usr/local/portage/, I would have assumed that an application like X11 that looks in /usr/share/X11/ for its configuration files would then look in /usr/share/local/X11/ for any custom symbols or overrides. I find a couple of approaches to local customisations which keep the files in the user's homedir. • https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/X_KeyBoard_extension#Local_XKB_folder • http://www.vinc17.org/unix/xkb.en.html My instinct is to prefer keeping them there, because it should mean that the user can copy his homedir to a new system or distro (or have it propagated over NFS or by a roaming profile) and his customisation(s) will still work (or, at least, the user will have copies of the config files which they can more easily install). I believe strongly in that kind of separation between _system files that the user has customised_ and _original system files which will be updated and maintained by the package manager_. However it's not clear that it's so clean and tidy with X11, and I can certainly see there's a good argument for CONFIG_PROTECT. Stroller.
