Re: lintian and (non-)conffiles in /etc
From: Henrique de Moraes Holschuh <hmh@debian.org>
Subject: Re: lintian and (non-)conffiles in /etc
Date: Mon, 12 Nov 2001 08:07:42 -0200
> > 2. it really is policy that configuration files included in a package
> > must be marked as conffiles (though I can't find that in the
> > Policy Manual), and
>
> Yes. If you include a configuration file (and thus any /etc file) inside the
> .deb, it MUST be marked a conffile.
I doubt this. On the contrary, Policy says as follows;
The distinction between these two is important; they are not
interchangeable concepts. Almost all `conffile's are configuration
files, but many configuration files are not `conffiles'.
> > 3. all configuration files must be in /etc (which is definitely in
> > section 11.7), then
>
> Yes. All configuration files must be in /etc :-P
>
> > why do we even need conffiles? Haven't I just defined a conffile as a
> > file in /etc included in a package?
>
> Ayup, but we do not know the future, and being able to mark any file as a
> conffile gives us some extra flexibility. Besides, someone might want to
> use the .deb format to package stuff that goes in /opt, for example.
I guess that the lintian's message
N: Files in /etc must be marked conffiles if they are included in a
N: package. Otherwise they should be created by maintainer scripts.
N:
N: Refer to Policy Manual, section 11.7 for details.
is a bug of lintian. Furthemore, the recent feature of dh_installdeb
If DH_COMPAT is set to 3 or higher, all files in the etc/
directory in a package will automatically be flagged as
conffiles by this program, so there is no need to list
them manually in package.conffiles.
should be able to be suppressed with some option for a specified files.
Best regards, 2001.11.13
--
Debian Developer & Debian JP Developer - much more I18N of Debian
Atsuhito Kohda <kohda@debian.org>
Department of Math., Tokushima Univ.
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