Erich, > Debian wants to provide a clean upgrade path for all packages. > But sometimes this is not possible (because it would require modifying > the users' home directories and such stuff) > Maybe it could be useful to have some kind of "upgrade-conflict" of > packages - these packages shouldn't be upgraded automatically, and > should probably be given the possibility for displaying a debconf note. Debian packages are expected to be upgradeable with skipping one release. After that, behaviour is officially undefined (but leaving the upgrade path in the postinst doesn't harm in most cases). So what you're proposing is in fact there, but not formalized for the package manager. There are a few approaches to problems like these: - Ask the administrator in the config script whether she allows upgrading of users' config files, then do it in the postinst. - Provide a wrapper that asks the user whether she wants to upgrade her config files - Hack the source so that old-style configs can be read in (issuing a warning) - Hack the source so that an old-style config is ignored (issuing a warning) Number one is most admin friendly, yet if the package maintainer screws up, she has lots of users screaming at her. Number two obviously works only for interactive programs and sometimes degrades performance, but is the best approach IMO. For the mail filter, the best idea IMO would be a mixture of 3 and 4 (ignore everything that can be rebuilt, try to understand the rest and issue a warning [mail the user using the filter]). > It could have been useful for galeon1, too - during it's early stages > (like version 0.1x) upgrades often required that you remove your .galeon > directory. This was "solved" by showing a debconf note when an upgrade > from such a version was detected; Think computer science lab installations. The admin has the choice of either deleting users' personalized config files (=> users screaming) or having their browsers fail (=> users yelling). Simon -- GPG Fingerprint: 040E B5F7 84F1 4FBC CEAD ADC6 18A0 CC8D 5706 A4B4
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