On Tue, 14 Feb 2017 10:22:14 +0000, Richard Kettlewell wrote:

>> However, you probably saw my later correction and now know that I meant
>> to write ".:/usr/local/etc:/etc" because I was talking about my
>> preferred search order when looking for configuration files.
>>
>> The reason for this preference is because it allows a site
>> configuration in /usr/local/etc to override a default configuration in
>> /etc while allowing any site-specific configuration to be overridden by
>> a locally declared one in the current directory. This can be very
>> useful during program development because it lets the special testing
>> configuration(s) override the normal configuration.
>
> Testing is normally done by specifying an alternative configuration via
> a command-line argument or an environment variable.
>
Command-line override is always an additional nice to have.

> For production uses, /etc is not there to provide defaults; it is there
> to provide the live configuration.

Depends. I'd agree for anything out of a standard package, but for
anything from a third party source or locally developed, I think /etc/
local/etc  is a better place for its configuration. For one thing, if
/usr/local is a symlink pointing to, say, /home/local then provided that
/home is in a partition that's not reformatted during a clean system
reinstall,  there's no danger of the reinstall clobbering third party
softare configurations.


--
martin@   | Martin Gregorie
gregorie. | Essex, UK
org       |

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