[arch-general] Improve the filesystem package

[Alain Kalker]

On 08/20/2014 02:04 PM, Alain Kalker wrote:
> Also, why ship the /etc/shadow, /etc/gshadow files at all?
> AFAIK, nothing is supposed to mess with the shadow files anyway, except
> pwconv and grpconv (for initially converting a freshly installed,
> non-shadow system into one using shadow files), after which these files
> should be managed by the shadow system itself, in response to
> adding/removing/changing users and groups using the designated tools.

 From `man pwconv`:

 > Each program acquires the necessary locks before conversion.

I'm quite certain that pacman doesn't do this when installing these 
files, and if it did, it would mean it has low-level knowledge about the 
shadow system which it isn't supposed to have.
Not properly locking these files can lead to some very surprising, 
unwanted behaviour, which I experienced first-hand when upgrading the 
filesystem package,

> Isn't the filesystem package supposed to be a kind of stable, hardly
> ever changing scaffold onto which other packages are supposed to attach
> their own changes? Why for example doesn't the systemd package add its
> users and groups using pre_install function in its install script?
>
> --
> Alain