Hello,
On Mon 08 May 2023 at 08:48AM -07, Russ Allbery wrote:
> In other words, dpkg-divert is primarily for local administrators,
> non-Policy-compliant local packages that are doing unusual things, and the
> occasional rare problem that requires special coordination between
> packages, not something that Debian packages should be doing to other
> packages without explicit coordination.
>
> The rule about systemd and udev files doesn't entirely fall out of that
> statement,
Hmm, could you explain why?
> so we can still include a specific statement about them, noting that
> drop-ins and masking make dpkg-divert unnecessary (and those
> facilities produce better tool behavior) and therefore it should not
> be used.
>
> So, ideally, the way I'd prefer to move forward is for us to add a new
> section to the main Policy manual on diversions (probably 10.11), document
> that this is primarily a tool for local administrators and local packages
> to override the behavior of Debian, and that its use between Debian
> packages should be rare, should involve coordination between the packages,
> and should only be used to solve problems that cannot be handled through
> other facilities such as alternatives or package-specific tools like
> systemd's support for drop-ins and masking. And then explicitly call out
> systemd and udev configuration as cases where dpkg-divert should not be
> used, alongside conffiles and critical system files.
I don't mean to dismiss the significant impact on the systemd
maintainers that's being claimed, but specifically calling out udev and
systemd configuration files seems strangely specific, for Policy, to me.
The general prohibition seems justified, and then I would be inclined to
use the systemd and udev configuration files case as an example, which
explains and justifies the existence of the rule. So instead of
[don't use dpkg-divert on other packages's files] In particular,
packages should not divert systemd and udev configuration files.
Doing so leads to confusing command output.
it seems more natural to me to do something like
[don't use dpkg-divert on other packages's files] For example,
diverting another package's systemd units or udev configuration
files can result in confusing command output.
If this was a mistake that maintainers seemed to habitually make, the
former would make sense, but so far I think we have just one or a few
concrete examples, and so the correct thing to do seems to me to be to
add normative language for only the general case.
--
Sean Whitton
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