Re: Bug#487437: Please include /etc/dpkg/origins/{debian,default}

[Santiago Vila <sanvila@unex.es>]

On Thu, 5 Feb 2009, Colin Watson wrote:

> With my Ubuntu hat on (as a frequent uploader of both base-files and
> dpkg there):
> [...]
>   * I very definitely prefer the default vendor change to be an explicit
>     change in base-files' source, rather than being implicit based on
>     the system on which base-files was built. That's much clearer and is
>     an insignificant cost for us.

Thanks. I'm going to do it that way to keep it simple. After all, it
will be trivial to fork in either case, which is the idea here.

> I have no particular opinion on any
>     particular way of creating that symlink, although I would find it a
>     little bit surprising if a user "sidegraded" from Debian to Ubuntu
>     or vice-versa and found that their entire system changed *except*
>     for /etc/dpkg/origins/default.

Could you elaborate on that?

For example, if we had implemented this a year ago, what would be, in
your opinion, the desirable behaviour regardind such symlink when
upgrading from Ubuntu 8.10 to lenny, or when upgrading from lenny to
Ubuntu 9.04?

Perhaps we should store the information about what the default is in a file,
not in a symlink, so that dpkg asks about this on upgrades?

Otherwise, I don't see a good way to avoid the surprise you describe
if we use a symlink for storing such info.