Re: Bug#489646: /etc/zsh_completion.d/ in Debian -- useful or harmful?

[Danek Duvall <duvall@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, Jan 02, 2009 at 03:09:14PM +0000, Clint Adams wrote:

> On Thu, Jan 01, 2009 at 09:26:33PM -0600, Dan Nelson wrote:
> > How does this differ from the existing ${datadir}/zsh/site-functions
> > directory?  Some FreeBSD port management tools install completion
> > scripts into that directory and zsh seems to pick them up
> > automatically, and it looks like some python-twisted Linux rpms install
> > into site_functions too.
> 
> In Debian's case, the site-functions directory is reserved strictly
> for the machine's administrator(s), and thus packages are forbidden
> to populate it.

What Perl has done, and what Sun has done for its Python distribution as
well, is to introduce a vendor-packages (for Python; vendor_perl for perl)
directory which is for packaged modules which can thus conflict with
neither the core modules nor with anything installed by hand.  That's one
way past this particular objection.  I agree that for packaged functions,
though, a place under /usr is more appropriate than under /etc.

Danek