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Posted Jun 5, 2024 12:52 UTC (Wed) by bluca (subscriber, #118303)
In reply to: Metrics missing by mb
Parent article: Debian's /tmpest in a teapot

Nope. Some things (many things) are well worth discussing. Some things just aren't, as it's just an endless stream of "but what about _MY_ use case" and it's literally impossible to do something that won't have any such complaints. In this case, where everything is trivially configurable and customizable, the only sensible course of action is to make a choice (and upstream is the best place to make such a choice), implement it, fix the couple of issues that crop up in-distro (already done), and document it for the rest. There is literally nothing of value to be gained from having an endless discussion about what's the best default for something that is entirely down to personal preferences - ask 10 people, you'll get 10 different answers. There is no great insight to be found, no clever solution, no lightbulb moment is just around the corner, just an endless stream of whinging. So yes, I don't care about any of that, and I am honest enough to just say it as it is, sorry (not sorry).

Metrics missing

Posted Jun 5, 2024 16:21 UTC (Wed) by rschroev (subscriber, #4164) [Link] (1 responses)

But in a case like this, there is not even a need to make a decision. I feel there's a very big difference between making a choice in a situation without history where the only consideration is the relative merits of the different choices, versus a situation where one of the choices was already chosen historically. In the latter case, the disadvantage of changing an existing situation needs to be taken into account too. If one choice is clearly better, it'll probably be worth it even it means exposing people to change.

What we have here is a case where one of alternatives has been in use for a very long time. At the same time seems that none of the alternatives is a clear winner (or at least that's the feeling I get from reading these comments). So why change? It leads to some people having to change their configuration, it leads to endless discussion, and as far as I can see has no real benefit.

From this discussion and the one about keepassxc, I get the feeling that Debian maintainers see every release as a new starting point, with not much consideration for keeping things the same between releases. What happened to "If it ain't broken, don't fix it" and the principle of least surprise?

> There is literally nothing of value to be gained from having an endless discussion about what's the best default for something that is entirely down to personal preferences - ask 10 people, you'll get 10 different answers.

So yes, choose a default, ignore the bike shedding. But once it's chosen (which in this case happened a long time ago), *stick with it* (until a clearly better alternative presents itself).

It could very well be that there actually is a good reason to change here, but honestly I haven't seen it anywhere in this whole discussion.

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Posted Jun 5, 2024 16:24 UTC (Wed) by bluca (subscriber, #118303) [Link]

> But once it's chosen (which in this case happened a long time ago), *stick with it*

Nothing was chosen, there was just inertia. tmpfs as a filesystem wasn't even available at the very beginning.