[[ Catching up on some NetBSD email ]]

Antti Kantee wrote:

> At the moment most games packages install datafiles to
> ${PREFIX}/share/$game and three (moria, xscrabble, zombies) use
> ${PREFIX}/share/games/$game. To improve the consistency among the games
> packages, it should be decided to use only one of the options.
> 
> Initially it has been though that using share/$game would be a better
> alternative which would treat games packages no different from other
> pacakges. In this case share/games should be seriously deprecated and
> possibly removed from pkg.dist. Note that share/games was added the same
> time as var and var/games, but while var and var/games were removed,
> share/games wasn't.
> 
> Using pkg/share/games would probably fit the basesrc games scheme
> better, but then again we don't have pkg/games to store the game
> binaries anyhow. Note that hier(7) doesn't contain anything about
> pkg/share.
> 
> The whole other problem is deciding wether to install score files in
> /var/games or pkg/share. At the moment moria, rocksndiamonds, xjewel,
> xscrabble and zombies use /var/games, other score-keeping packages (such
> as nethack) use pkg/share.
> 
> Any insights or thoughts or opinions on how to proceed with the cleanup?

When this was last discussed in detail around December '98 the concensus
was to use ${PREFIX}/share/games/$game and /var/games.  In summary:

 + ${PREFIX}/share/games/$game was more in line with hier(7) and won't
   clutter up ${PREFIX}/share any more than it is now.

 + /var/games for score files since ${PREFIX} should be essentially
   read-only.  This was the reason that ${PREFIX}/var/games was
   backed out.

I like the separation of having ${PREFIX}/games for game binaries - we
already have {bin,libexec,sbin}.  Is this too much of a change to make?
As for the three packages that currently use ${PREFIX}/share/games, I
wrote one, built the package for another and don't know where the third
came from :-)

I remember looking at nethack - as well as the score type files (logfile
& record), the bones files and save directory should also live under
/var/games/nethackdir and it looked like it was a "more than five minute
job(TM)".  I'm on a nethack streak at the moment - maybe I'll look at
this again...

Simon.