CCing #989905 (base-files)
That's a cool low-friction solution! :-) P.S. How likely is a future
where Emacs will return non-zero exit status if package-user-dir is not
found? I'm guessing unlikely?
> Some possible alternatives:
>
> 1) maybe Sean remembers the proposed convention for a known empty
> directory? Is this usable in stable?
>
> 2) We could create and clean up an empty temporary directory
>
> 3) We could create /usr/lib/dh-elpa/empty
I have no strong opinion towards any of these options, but I was shocked
to discover that Debian didn't already have a /var/run/empty.
So I filed #989905 requesting /var/run/empty (present in Fedora, RedHat,
CentOS, SUSE, Arch, FreeBSD, and probably more). It's not FHS, but it
seems like maybe it should be; although, a systemd-centric future
probably dynamically creates empty paths as-needed...
https://bugs.debian.org/989905
Maybe a TC member could say something about whether a canonical empty
directory equivalent to /dev/null is good design? Unfortunately it
won't help the situation in stable--unless base-files receives a
stable-update. It seems like it might also require a point in Policy
along the lines of "packages must not install files nor write to
/var/run/empty".
#1 (via #989905) seems the cleanest, most standard, and conventional to
me, #2 seems like a maintscript (which are increasingly discouraged) or
a dpkg feature, and it seems to me that #3 sets a precedent that
sanctions the proliferation of empty directories (which is maybe
harmless and only kind of ugly and confusing?). It's possible I'm
biased, so I leave it to you!
Cheers,
Nicholas