Re: removing conffiles

[Daniel Martin <dtm12@jhunix.hcf.jhu.edu>]

martin@internet-treff.uni-koeln.de (Martin Bialasinski) writes:

> >> "MS" == Martin Schulze <joey@finlandia.Infodrom.North.DE> writes:
> 
> MS> Martin Bialasinski wrote:
> 
> >> will dpkg remove a conffile on a upgrade, if I remove it from the
> >> package?
> 
> MS> I guess so.  Why don't you try it on your system?  Make a backup
> MS> before.
> 
> I tried, and it didn't. I don't know if this is intentional or because 
> I altered the conffile, so I asked.

See what I do in fvwm95 with regard to changing conffiles.

Basically, all this is done in the preinst, with a little check to see
if the user has modified the conffile.  If they have, then the
conffile is not removed and a message is printed telling the sysadmin
to do some cleanup work (but installation continues).  If they haven't
modified it, the file is then moved to a directory which is cleaned up
in the postinst.  (This is so an abort-upgrade can recover the old
configuration).

I stole this idea (and most of the code) from the fvwm2 maintainer,
who does something similar to deal with this situation.