Bug#108587: May packages rm -rf subdirectories of /etc/ ?
On Thu, 2003-07-24 at 14:53, Stephen Frost wrote:
> * Thomas Hood (jdthood@yahoo.co.uk) wrote:
> > Package foo which eliminates /etc/foo.conf doesn't "know"
> > that there is not some other package, bar, which Depends
> > on foo and uses /etc/foo.conf . That's the problem. See
> > #108587 for additional discussion.
>
> The maintainer should really know. The maintainer is more likely to
> know than the user in many cases. I think it would be worthwhile for
> policy to be modified to require notification when a sharing of this
> kind happens. I know that I'd expect someone to tell me if they're
> using a conffile from my package.
If this were required in policy, then there ought to be an easy
way to comply. We could allow packages to list Conffiles that
are not shipped with the package; these would have to be included
in some package upon which the dependent package Depends. That
would give dpkg the information it needs to decide whether it
is OK to delete the conffile when foo abandons it. If bar listed
foo.conf as a conffile, then bar could inherit the file when foo
abandoned it.
Perhaps that could be made to work, but it would be complex,
and dpkg is already beyond the capacity of Debian to maintain
properly.
--
Thomas
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