Bug#822857: Fwd: Bug#822857: at-spi2-core: doesn't clean up legacy directory properly

[Simon McVittie <smcv@debian.org>]

Christoph Anton Mitterer wrote:
>> Apparently /etc/at-spi2 is no longer part of the package.
>> The directory, though empty (at least after upgrade), isn't
>> cleaned up properly however:
>> Unpacking at-spi2-core (2.20.1-1) over (2.18.3-4) ...
>> dpkg: warning: unable to delete old directory '/etc/at-spi2': Directory not empty

As far as I know, this warning is expected, and will happen any time
a conffile is cleaned up with dpkg-maintscript-helper and was the only
thing in that directory. That's because dpkg tries to remove the obsolete
directory during unpack, but dpkg-maintscript-helper doesn't remove the
obsolete conffile until the package is configured (because until then,
if something goes wrong, we might have to roll back), so the directory
is non-empty.

If you haven't modified the conffile, the *next* upgrade of the package
will clean up the empty directory. I think this can be brought forward to
the configure step by having debian/at-spi2-core.postinst containing
something like:

    #!/bin/sh
    set -e

    #DEBHELPER#

    rmdir --ignore-fail-on-non-empty /etc/at-spi2 || true

I'm not sure whether the benefit is worth the complexity here or not.

If you *have* modified the conffile, the directory can't and won't be
deleted, and it is normal to get the warning in any case.

    S