[OpenAFS-devel] Call for consensus: configure defaulting behavior change

[Sam Hartman]

Now that AFS supports configure, people probably expect to be able to
use the --prefix argument and other path control switches to  change
where AFS puts files and  where it expects to find them at runtime.
Clearly we will want to support the current paths now.  Most existing
users will continue to  use the Transarc style paths or whatever
site-specific modifications they have been using.  

I suspect that new sites may start to use paths that better model how
other free software (or how software on their OS) works.  It seems
likely that we will want to support both path styles.  I have been
working with Jeff Hutzelman on the directory issues that are involved
in this proposal.  I hope to have a patch ready soon.  However  I need
to get a consensus from the group on  one issue  before I submit a
completed patch.

As I mentioned we will need to support the Transarc paths because many
people will use them.  However, I would like to make more traditional
configure paths be the default.  The reason I'd like to do this is
that I want the software to behave as people who are familiar with
configure expect.  There would then be an --enable-transarc-paths
option that would get the traditional AFS behavior.


The major objection I can see to my proposal is that I'm breaking the
behavior for people who are familiar with AFS in order to make things
work like configure traditionally works.  I argue that AFS hasn't
really used configure that long .  I hope that people are willing to
accept adding an extra argument to configure in order to get the
behavior they expect from AFS.  Does this seem reasonable?