Re: Registration for maintainer script-managed files (Was: Re: 2 questions on dpkg and 1 for m68k, thanks)

[Brian May <bam@debian.org>]

>>>>> "Matt" == Matt Zimmerman <mdz@debian.org> writes:

    Matt> This is another reason why I think we need a more flexible
    Matt> way to declare package ownership of files.  Even if a
    Matt> filesystem object is managed by the maintainer scripts, we
    Matt> should be able to use the power of the packaging system to
    Matt> track who is responsible for it, and prevent conflicts.

    Matt> How about a mechanism similar to conffiles?  A package
    Matt> should be able to register these files somehow.

I completely agree with you. (sidenote: what should a package do when
it attempts to register a file that is already registered? How should
update-alternatives be handled? Should update-alternatives support
this scheme and automatically register the file to the correct
package?)

Also, I think it should be dpkgs responsibility to delete all files
and directories belonging to a package (when purging the package).
(not sure about update-alternatives).  It should keep track of any
files/directories which can't be deleted too.

For example, if I try to purge xyz, but for some reason it can't
delete /etc/xyz/ (for instance maybe the system administrator
accidently moved an important file, like /etc/passwd into
/etc/xyz/). 

Current situation: Either:

1. dpkg would print a warning (which is easy to miss), completely forget
about the directory, and mark the package as purged.
2. maintainer script would "rm -rf /etc/xyz".

Ideal solution:

dpkg should remember these files so that a latter attempt to purge the
package will succeed, and so you don't have old directories sitting
around doing nothing.
-- 
Brian May <bam@debian.org>