Re: Bug#189370: acknowledged by developer (irrelevant)

[Atsuhito Kohda <kohda@pm.tokushima-u.ac.jp>]

From: "Marcelo E. Magallon" <mmagallo@debian.org>
Subject: Re: Bug#189370: acknowledged by developer (irrelevant)
Date: Tue, 22 Apr 2003 01:45:07 +0200

> >> Atsuhito Kohda <kohda@pm.tokushima-u.ac.jp> writes:
> 
>  > In this case, administrator should modify TEXINPUTS.latex in
>  > /etc/texmf/texmf.d/45TeXinputs.cnf and run update-texmf once.
>  > Generated texmf.cnf should be the same as an old one.
> 
>  What makes you think that special casing the Debian installations is
>  something that every system administrator is willing to do?
> 
>  I'm not saying that your solution is bad.  It is fine as a generic
>  solution in the context of Debian, but it is not the only one.
> 
>  > >  Now image this: there's security upgrade for tetex-bin and the
>  > >  poor fool has a cronjob that installs it.  After its installation,
>  > >  the local texmf.cnf is trashed.
>  > 
>  > the local texmf.cnf is not trashed if administrator acted as above,
>  > only once.
> 
>  That might be something the _system_ _administrator_ does not want to
>  do, for whatever reason, and that's none of  _your_ bussiness.  Repeat
>  this until you get it: "It's _his_ system, not mine."

So, in short, it is possible to generate compatible
texmf.cnf if the admin worked hard but if not, generated
texmf.cnf is not compatible with non-Debian system.

If so, I can understand.

>  > Am I missing something?
> 
>  The forest for the trees, yes.
> 
>  The point at discussion is simple: you can't blow away local changes
>  _without_ asking, and that's precisely what tetex-bin is doing.  The
>  scope of the local changes is not your bussiness.  Your only concern
>  should be "do I have permission to do this or not?"  The default is
>  "no, I do not".

Okay, I guessed that the old /etc/texmf/texmf.cnf was
a conffile but the current one is a configuration file
so it's okay only reserving the old file as texmf.cnf.dpkg-old
and explain how to migrate to the new scheme in README.Debian
but it seemed there are many members who disagree.

So I decided to stop generating /etc/texmf/texmf.cnf
but generate directly /var/lib/texmf/web2c/texmf.cnf
which is not a conffile nor a configuration file so
no policy violation occured any more.  The current 
texmf.cnf is not human editable but only generated file 
so it would be appropriate to put it under /var

Thanks,			 2003-4-22(Tue)

-- 
 Debian Developer & Debian JP Developer - much more I18N of Debian
 Atsuhito Kohda <kohda@debian.org>
 Department of Math., Tokushima Univ.