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Re: about the debian way



On Sat, Mar 16, 2002 at 11:35:11AM -0500, Sam Hartman wrote:
> >>>>> "Steve" == Steve Greenland <steveg@moregruel.net> writes:
> 
>     Steve> On 15-Mar-02, 20:59 (CST), Sam Hartman
>     Steve> <hartmans@debian.org> wrote:
> 
>     Steve> That's exactly what's happened. See bug 138484. Apparently
>     Steve> the suggestion that a user simply edit a file is now
>     Steve> considered insulting and against "the debian way", even
>     Steve> though that ability to modify is considered one of the core
>     Steve> benefits of free software. I'll note that the other
>     Steve> respondent to this thread came up with the same suggestion.
> 
> No, it's more that if the feature is wanted by enough people you
> should probably provide a better way to do it than relying on
> conffiles.  The issue is that conffiles present a fairly ugly UI and
> that if the user needs justify it, a better UI should be provided.
> 
> I like to think of conffiles as a great solution to all the
> configuration choices that I'm not going to think of but that one or
> two people want.  It is important at least to me to make sure that the
> vas majority of users of my packages do not need to edit conffiles.
> 
> If your explanation is that you don't think the feature is worth the
> complexity of maintaining, then first I'll note that is your call to
> make.  Secondly, it seems like a reasonable call in this case.
> 

I can live without this 'feature' which seems really easy to maintain
and make sense (why not a separate cron script for checksecurity ?).

What I don't really appreciate is when a bug is closed without reason to
do it. IMHO the bug should stay with a wishlist severity and eventually
tagged wontfix by the packager.

And btw I think that the 'cut and past' solution (which is the reason
behind the bug closing) is a bad one. It will break as soon as
checksecurity change in the cron package script and before this happen I
will loose the benefit of bug fixes and new features if I don't check
the diff between my modified conffile and the new one for each upgrade.
This remembers me a previous life where '--nodeps --force' was an
important option and each upgrade comes with a few things to fix.

Steve if you want to make me happy (why not?):
. reopen the bug and tag it wontfix
or
. split the standard file

And I appreciate your work that's why I want to use it without
reimplementing parts of it to use it in my not so uncommon usage.

Christophe

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-- 
Christophe Barbé <christophe.barbe@ufies.org>
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L'experience, c'est une connerie par jour mais jamais la même.

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