Bug#189370: acknowledged by developer (irrelevant)
[ forgot to CC my last message here to -devel ]
On Thu, 2003-04-17 at 21:28, Atsuhito Kohda wrote:
> From: Colin Walters <walters@debian.org>
> Subject: Bug#189370: acknowledged by developer (irrelevant)
> Date: 17 Apr 2003 20:32:41 -0400
>
> > reopen 189370
> > thanks
>
> sigh.
I won't reopen it again. But its open/closed state doesn't change the
fact that it is a bug, and it's not fixed.
> > Only if you can *perfectly* preserve changes.
>
> There is nothing perfect in this world, I think ;)
Debian has a long, hard-earned reputation for doing things "right". We
shouldn't toss that out the window in a mass of "manage /etc/foo.conf?"
with debconf prompts.
> > You just overwrote a configuration file with something else. I could
> > have easily modified that file.
> >
> > In fact I just tested this. I have "tetex-bin/use_debconf" set to true,
> > and then I did: echo '%test' >> /etc/texmf/language.dat, then I did
> > apt-get install --reinstall tetex-bin. The postinst happily destroyed
> > my local changes.
>
> This is natural because you choose to destory your setting
> with setting tetex/bin/use_debconf to true.
> Note the priority is high in this case.
You don't understand Debconf. It is a cache, not a registry. I should
be able to rm -rf /var/cache/debconf/config.dat *at any time*. If I do
that, since your question defaults to "yes", any local changes I've made
will be destroyed.
> Even if the default setting "true" might have slight possibilty
> to cause problem, "default" answer should be for majority users
> and I think "true" is correct setting in real system.
It is not, for the reason above.
> If this breaks Policy really I suspect Policy should be changed
> in a more realistic way.
It does break policy. There is no question. And I think policy is
correct. If you don't think it is, the right way to solve the problem
is to discuss the issue here on -devel.
Again, I am proposing a much more policy-compliant alternative that
still provides most features; i.e. the way I do things with fontconfig.
I wrote a little bit about it in my first mail, but "apt-get source
fontconfig" for the details.
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