Didier Kryn <kryn@???> wrote:

> There seems to be a new fashion to install config files half in some random place and the rest in /etc, with precedence in /etc in case of duplication? Xorg does the same, with defaults sparsed between /usr/share/X11 and /etc/X11.

There are good reasons for doing it that way - a few packages I use are like that. It means the packages can ship with large and complete config files in /usr/share which can be updated when the package is updated. The user/admin then provides local config in /etc which overrides only those options needed for the local install. If the package supplied defaults are reasonably sane, then it means the local config file can be fairly small.

It (mostly) gets round the problem of sticking a big config file in /etc, the user/admin edits that, and then when the package is upgraded, the user/admin has to go through all the differences and either miss out on new stuff in the config file or redo all the localisation by updating the new config file. IMO that's one of the biggest headaches of upgrades - going through config files side by side deciding how best to handle it.

I guess it's functionally no different to having a /etc/${package}/config and /etc/${package}/config.local