Gentoo Authors, Sometimes You Suck

So, today my website bit the big one. My fault? I wish. Seems that the Gentoo Apache2 maintainers decided to redo the entire configuration directory structure without really telling anyone. I followed through with what I thought was a normal upgrade, and magically Apache wouldn’t start anymore. Not only did they change where the config files were, they combined two of the files themselves, and modified how modules and virtual hosts were loaded.

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You know what Gentoo? Keep your fucking hands off the God Damn config files! As long as I point to the correct initial httpd.conf file, how I arrange the includes, modules, and virtual hosts is none of your fucking business! You say you wanted to fix bugs in distribution? Suck it. Configuration files are made and maintained by the system administrator, and it’s their fucking responsibility to make sure things work. If I want my apache.conf to be just one huge list of includes, all prefixed with the the phrase “I_like_pie”, that’s my fucking prerogative.

All that should concern you, is where that first config file is read from. If you were nice, your install could have checked for the old default install, since you knew how it was built, and made the new Apache config file a symlink back to it, with instructions on how to migrate. But no, you’d rather be assholes about the whole thing. Thanks guys! Now, excuse me while I make a highly customized Apache config structure, so that the next release of Apache puts the config in a completely different directory in your next release. Might I suggest /etc/httpd/apache/conf/2.0/stable/no.really/we-mean-it.

I just don’t really understand why the location of the configuration file is so magically critical… I finally got everything working again, but I can imagine this might have caused some irritation in people that have websites that matter. Man, I really hope they get crucified for this, so it doesn’t happen again. I guess there really are no good distros out there, after all. We’re supposed to be above this kind of political shit. Damn.