Re: /etc/shells management

[Daniel Martin <martin@snowplow.org>]

Andreas Metzler <ametzler@downhill.at.eu.org> writes:

> Manoj Srivastava <srivasta@debian.org> wrote:
>> On Mon, 08 Sep 2003 11:11:34 +0200, Andreas Metzler <ametzler@downhill.at.eu.org> said: 
>>> Branden Robinson <branden@debian.org> wrote: [...]
>>>> I'd propose a Policy amendment dropping support for this
>>>> long-obsolete dpkg behavior, but I reckon I've lost my
>>>> Policy-amendment-proposing credentials in your eyes.
>
>>> I would support it.
>
>>        Why?
>
> Hello,
> It is cruft and policy has over 300KB. Afaik policy's purpose is not
> to document historical behaviour in dpkg but technical requirements
> for packages in Debian.

Perhaps we could add a compromise?  Say, modifying the paragraph in
question to read:

     If there is no most recently configured version `dpkg' will pass
     a null argument.

     (Historical note: Truly ancient (pre-1997) versions of dpkg
     passed `<unknown>' (including the angle brackets) in this case.
     Even older ones did not pass a second argument at all, under any
     circumstance.  Note that upgrades using such an old dpkg version
     are unlikely to work for other reasons, even if this old argument
     behavior is handled by your postinst script.)

So historical notes about dpkg are there, but where they belong - in a
parenthetical historical note.  I think this improves the clarity of
the document as a whole.