Re: use and abuse of debconf

["Oliver Elphick" <olly@lfix.co.uk>]

Joey Hess wrote:
  >It has recently come to my attention that several developers are using
  >debconf as an excuse to write a quick hack rather than doing things
  >right. In particular I am talking about several packages that use
  >debconf to prompt the user for information, then write the information
  >to a file in /etc, and when upgraded or reconfigured, clobber any
  >manual changes to the file (and no, I'm not just talking about lilo).
 ...
  >And this as its postinst:
  >
  >#!/bin/sh -e
  >. /usr/share/debconf/confmodule
  >db_get foo/question
  >echo "# DO NOT modify this file; it is automatically generated." > /etc/foo
 
While I support your general case, the use of this particular example does
not help it.  Presumably this file (besides containing the above warning
line) is not marked as a conffile, so the maintainer should have the right
to modify it.  Of course, if it is a conffile, the warning is inappropriate.

-- 
Oliver Elphick                                Oliver.Elphick@lfix.co.uk
Isle of Wight                              http://www.lfix.co.uk/oliver
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