Re: Deleting uncompressed Info/Doc files at upgrades
On Thu, 1 Oct 1998, Peter S Galbraith wrote:
> Santiago Vila wrote:
>
> > On Thu, 1 Oct 1998, Peter S Galbraith wrote:
> >
> > > It occurs to me that upgrading a package should delete old versions
> > > of user-uncompressed doc and info files.
> >
> > The package system is not supposed to read your mind.
> >
> > You should probably take a look at /var/lib/dpkg/info/*.list
> > This is where dpkg remembers which files belong to which packages.
> > You should never uncompress files "in place" because then dpkg will be
> > unable to remove the files which belong to a certain package when it is
> > removed or replace by a new one.
>
> But... That was my point!
>
> Uncompressing docs or info is *not* unusual, nor should it be frowned
> upon. We should accommodate the possibility of that happening. The same
> way that a properly-configured Emacs will read-in a compressed file
> correctly, dpkg should treat an uncompressed file as the same and upgrade
> it.
this seems to be a case of "don't do that then".
no tool will ever be smart enough to cope perfectly with users leaving
crud all over the disk. in particular, it is unclear what The Right
Thing to do is. Some people will want dpkg to automagically clean up
their mess. Other people will be infuriated by dpkg touching files
that don't "belong" to it (i fall into this camp because it follows the
principle of least surprise, and doesn't require mind-reading powers in
dpkg).
users should uncompress their files to /tmp or under /usr/local or some
other more suitable location. if they choose to do otherwise, then
they should accept the consequences of their actions and deal with it
themselves.
craig
--
craig sanders
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