Re: PROPOSAL: Extrafiles (was Re: Conffiles...)

[Philip Hands <phil@hands.com>]

> Hi,
> 
> 	I have one point to add to this. Handling files not mentioned
>  in the *.list file was one way of several packages to handle/edit a
>  common file, for example, if a bunch of packages need /etc/foo to
>  exist, and foo can contain the word bar or bah, then any package, in
>  the postinst, finding that /etc/foo did not exist, can question the
>  user and create the file (the other packages then accept it).

In this situation, would it not be better to have an etc-foo package, that 
handles the creation of /etc/foo, and have the other packages depend upon it ?

It seems to me that having multiple packages duplicating functionality like 
this is likely to lead to trouble, so instead we should adopt the more reliable
(if slightly more cumbersome) approach of splitting the shared parts out into a 
separate packages.

Are there other examples you can think of where files might end up being 
considered to be shared ?

BTW this has no bearing for, or against, the idea of Extrafiles --- in the 
above case etc-foo could have /etc/foo listed as an extrafile.

Cheers, Phil.


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