[yocto] [opkg-devel] [opkg-utils] Question: why update-alternatives from opkg-utils chooses /usr/lib to hold database?

[Richard Purdie]

On Tue, 2019-03-05 at 16:05 +0000, Alejandro Del Castillo wrote:
> 
> On 3/5/19 12:11 AM, ChenQi wrote:
> > Hi All,
> > 
> > Recently I'm dealing with issue from which some discussion raises.
> > I'd like to ask why update-alternatives from opkg-utils chooses
> > /usr/lib 
> > to hold its alternatives database?
> > I looked into debian, its update-alternatives chooses /var/lib by
> > default.
> > Is there some design consideration? Or some historical reason?
> 
> Update-alternatives used to be on the opkg repo. I did a search
> there 
> all the way to the first commit on 2008-12-15 [1], but even then 
> /usr/lib was used. I can't think of a design consideration that
> would 
> make /usr/lib more palatable than the Debian default.
> 
> Maybe someone with more knowledge of the previous history can chime
> in?
> 
> [1] 
> http://git.yoctoproject.org/clean/cgit.cgi/opkg/commit/?id=8bf49d16a637cca0cd116450dfcabc4c941baf6c

I think the history is that the whole of /var was considered volatile
and we wanted the alternatives data to stick around so it was put under
/usr.

That decision doesn't really make sense now since only parts of /var
are volatile..

Cheers,

Richard