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Re: Updating scanners and filters in Debian stable (3.1)



Colin Watson wrote:

On Mon, Sep 13, 2004 at 10:00:40PM +0200, martin f krafft wrote:

also sprach Johannes Rohr <j.rohr@gmx.de> [2004.09.13.2128 +0200]:

f-prot-installer downloads both the scanner engine as well as
virus definitions from the vendor's FTP site. However, if they
decide to change FTP location, the layout of their tarballs or
their own update script, the installer will break. Would this
warrant an update to stable?

No,


Why not? If the package has been completely broken by external factors,
that certainly justifies updating stable.


but you could make it get the URL from a page under your control.
That's what I do with my own f-prot package.


That would avoid the problem happening in the first place, of course.
(However, $DEITY forbid, you might be hit by a bus and then somebody
else would have to figure out how to regain control of the package, but
that's less likely ...)

Maybe not as likely as loosing the web location that holds the information. I thought about using my current web space. But that is a free service which could be discontinued at any time. Therefore I'd prefer updating stable in case of changes introduced by the vendor.

Additionally, there might be changes that cannot be caught by keeping an extra bit of information at some Internet location: In the past, Frisk Software replaced the shell script they used formerly for updating virus definitions, by a perl script which introduced a depencency on several perl modules.

Also they removed some files while adding others. They entirely changed the directory layout of their tarball. If there is someone around who is capable of preparing for any possible future change, please feel welcome to adopt the package.

Thanks,

Johannes



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