Makefile: do not prefix /etc

[vrothberg]

Revert commit 3d0e08f. /etc/ does not need a prefix and can be customized with the ETCDIR env variable.

Fixes: #18250

Does this PR introduce a user-facing change?

None

[Luap99]

LGTM

[edsantiago]

@tobwen PTAL, this reverts your PR #10786. I never understood the point of that PR, but if you have a compelling reason for insisting that it remain in place, please speak now.

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[vrothberg]

@tobwen PTAL, this reverts your PR #10786. I never understood the point of that PR, but if you have a compelling reason for insisting that it remain in place, please speak now.

Thanks for pulling in @tobwen, Ed!

[tobwen]

IMHO, in the GNU Makefile Conventions, there is nothing like $ETCDIR. The closest thing to it would be sysconfdir, but: [...] This directory should normally be /usr/local/etc, but write it as $(prefix)/etc. (If you are using Autoconf, write it as ‘@sysconfdir@’.)

I haven't seen an application in the last years that doesn't automatically push etc/ under ${prefix}. I'm using GNU Stow to version my self-built software, so I'm expecting to have my stuff under /usr/local/stow/podman-x.xx. In many applications, make install DESTDIR= has site-effects, since the target directory need to be known before building (for example, when scripts are written).

However, I do not want to stand in the way of your project. And if $ETCDIR is to be used, I have to take it into account when building in the future (if necessary, an entry should also be made in INSTALL.md, so that when building and installing as root, /etc/ doesn't get overwritten unexpectedly, as it was my case.

[edsantiago]

ping, to let everyone know that @tobwen has responded (but did so via an edit, not a post, so it didn't go to anyone's email). Read above.

Also, I'm waffling a lot on this PR. I believe we need to keep $PREFIX/etc because there are an unknown number of users out there, with no root access but permissions to install into /usr/local, and for those it would be impossible to install into /etc. But then: will podman read /usr/local/etc/ on those systems? I don't think so, because this is just make, not ./configure && make, and I see no mechanism for overriding /etc in podman itself. So then removing $PREFIX is the correct thing to do.

Out of time. This can continue tomorrow.

[vrothberg]

But then: will podman read /usr/local/etc/ on those systems?

Not consistently, no. It may work for containers.conf but for this config only. But the docker.in is sensitive to it.

Since commit 1edada4 we no longer install 87-podman-bridge.conflist, so we can scratch that off the list. I don't think anything is installed to /etc anymore.

With respect to docker.in: Wouldn't PREFIX=/foo ETCDIR=/foo/etc make ... get the desired behavior? I wonder whether this path needs to configurable at all. Which brings me to the next question: Do we still need a configurable /etc?

[Luap99]

Whenever we need a customizable ETCDIR should not be the discussion here. The binaries never respected it anyway. The original problem as @vrothberg points out is fixed we no longer install anything into /etc so this change should not cause problems.

[vrothberg]

Whenever we need a customizable ETCDIR should not be the discussion here. The binaries never respected it anyway.

I am not that sure. The behavior of docker.in is sensitive to this setting.

The binaries never respected it anyway.

Podman did to some degree. containers.conf is the only one AFAICS.

I am not advertising for doing it but I also don't want this conversation to be shot down too quickly.

[Luap99]

I am not saying we shouldn't have this discussion, but this PR is not the place to have it IMO.
We caused a regression this fixes it. The docker.in is the only file using ETCDIR so I see no problem with this patch.
The alternative would be to revert the docker.in change which is IMO much worse.

Podman did to some degree. containers.conf is the only one AFAICS.

containers.conf is defined in c/common. The podman build command sets X github.com/containers/podman/v4/libpod/config._etcDir=/usr/local/etc which does not exist. So I do not see how any config file ever used this path. Maybe the libpod.conf, this was before my time?

[tobwen]

Dar fellas, as I said, feel free to discard my old PR. I don't want to block a PR, nor do I want to start trouble.

[vrothberg]

@rhatdan PTAL

[vrothberg]

So, can we merge?

[Luap99]

@containers/podman-maintainers PTAL

[edsantiago]

/lgtm