[Tfug] fhs on /var/cache (debian)

[t takahashi]

it appears that one cannot actually boot a debian system without a
populated /var/cache, even if one recreates the hierarchy without the
regular files, and have everything work.

almost everything does work, but the package system fails with all
sorts of errors, including messageless segmentation faults (imo there
is, let's just say, room for improvement in that), each appearing
after the previous is fixed.

has anybody else tried this?  (i won't bore you with why this matters.)

in other news, imo debian, in keeping debconf in /var/cache, violates
fhs, but the opinion of the maintainer is that it is discardable data
and therefore fhs-compliant.
but that's nothing compared to the package manager not working.

in any case (and i post this with the realization that this is an
arcane question for this list) here is the fhs, just in case anybody
on this list is actually involved with debian policy or has hacked on
apt internals (where "hacked on" doesn't mean "i use it").  i guess i
am just being too lazy to subscribe to the appropriate debian list.

======

/var/cache : Application cache data

Purpose

/var/cache is intended for cached data from applications. Such data is locally
generated as a result of time-consuming I/O or calculation. The application
must be able to regenerate or restore the data. Unlike /var/spool, the cached
files can be deleted without data loss. The data must remain valid between
invocations of the application and rebooting the system.

Files located under /var/cache may be expired in an application specific
manner, by the system administrator, or both. The application must always be
able to recover from manual deletion of these files (generally because of a
disk space shortage). No other requirements are made on the data format of the
cache directories.

    Rationale: The existence of a separate directory for cached data allows
    system administrators to set different disk and backup policies from other
    directories in /var.

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