Package: desktop-base Version: 11.0.2 Severity: important User: debian-qa@lists.debian.org Usertags: piuparts Hi, during a test with piuparts I noticed your package left unowned files on the system after purge, which is a violation of policy 6.8: https://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-maintainerscripts.html#details-of-removal-and-or-configuration-purging The leftover files are actually alternatives that were installed by the package but have not been properly removed. While there is ongoing discussion how to remove alternatives correctly (see https://bugs.debian.org/71621 for details) the following strategy should work for regular cases: * 'postinst configure' always installs the alternative * 'prerm remove' removes the alternative * 'postrm remove' and 'postrm disappear' remove the alternative In all other cases a maintainer script is invoked (e.g. upgrade, deconfigure) the alternatives are not modified to preserve user configuration. Removing the alternative in 'prerm remove' avoids having a dangling link once the actual file gets removed, but 'prerm remove' is not called in all cases (e.g. unpacked but not configured packages or disappearing packages) so the postrm must remove the alternative again (update-alternatives gracefully handles removal of non-existing alternatives). Note that the arguments for adding and removing alternatives differ, for removal it's 'update-alternatives --remove <name> <path>'. Filing this as important as having a piuparts clean archive is a release goal since lenny. >From the attached log (scroll to the bottom...): 0m37.3s INFO: Warning: Package purging left files on system: /etc/alternatives/desktop-theme -> /usr/share/desktop-base/futureprototype-theme not owned /usr/share/desktop-base/ owned by: desktop-base /usr/share/desktop-base/active-theme -> /etc/alternatives/desktop-theme not owned cheers, Andreas
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desktop-base_11.0.2.log.gz
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