Bug#108587: May packages rm -rf subdirectories of /etc/ ?

[Thomas Hood <jdthood@yahoo.co.uk>]

Herbert Xu <herbert@gondor.apana.org.au> wrote (to debian-devel):
> Unfortunately dpkg does not handle the case where a conffile
> ceases to exist in a later version of a package.  The conffile
> will be left on the system even after purging.

Agreed, dpkg should do something reasonable when a package
is replaced and the new version doesn't list all the 
conffiles that the old one did.  I'd say that it should
rename such conffiles to $NAME.dpkg-old .  Would that be enough,
or should the user be asked about it?

I am cc:ing this to #108587 (and to people who commented on it)
which already asks for dpkg to handle disappearing conffiles
properly.

--
Thomas