Re: md5sums files

[Agustin Martin <agmartin@debian.org>]

On Fri, Mar 05, 2010 at 02:07:01PM -0600, Peter Samuelson wrote:
> 
> [Russ Allbery]
> > Figuring out a better solution for why the files in /var/lib/ispell
> > and /var/lib/aspell are excluded from the md5sums generation because
> > they change after installation is probably needed if we're going to
> > remove creation of those files from control of the packager.
> 
> It seems odd to ship files that are expected to change, but aren't
> conffiles.  What happens if you either reinstall or upgrade the deb in
> question?  I mean, the local changes get overwritten - how is that not
> a bad thing?

That file is rewritten, a script run from dictionary postinst detects that
it is rewritten (really that version in it is nil or lower that current
compatibility version for the spellchecking engine) and rebuilds the
dictionary hash according to data provided by the new dictionary.

Same happens if a new spellchecking engine (ispell or aspell) is uploaded
with a higher compatibility version, ispell or aspell postinsts run the hash
build utility and all affected hashes are rebuilt, transition is done in a
minute. No need of massive bug reports, pressure on maintainers, ...

Regards,

-- 
Agustin