Re: Bug#574443: debhelper: New helper proposal: dh_oldconffiles (or similar name)

[Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com>]

Jean-Christophe Dubacq wrote:
> On Tue, Apr 06, 2010 at 06:36:46PM +0200, sean finney wrote:
>> On Tue, Apr 06, 2010 at 02:53:20PM +0200, Raphael Hertzog wrote:

>>> I will try to merge something during next week-end hopefully. Until then I
>>> would be glad if some people could review Joey's old proposal from
>>> http://lists.debian.org/debian-dpkg/2008/01/msg00143.html
>>> to see if there are problems in the approach.
>>
>> it might be nice if someone were to review/compare this use case for
>> dpkg-conffile vs the proposed use case of a dpkg-conffile command from
>> the conffile-tracking support[1], and see if the two could co-exist.

Joey’s script says:

 +.SH BUGS
 +Arguably the need for this program at all is a bug in dpkg. If dpkg is
 +ever changed to somehow handle conffile deletion and renaming on its own,
 +this program could turn into a deprecated no-op.

I think they could co-exist.  In fact, this maintainer script helper
would be a helpful for conffile tracking, since it provides a way for
the maintainer to declare that a configuration file is being renamed.

> Even if these commands should not be merged, given the number of 
> "dynamic" configuration files (generated through debconf interactions),
> it looks much more reasonable to expect a conffile manager for maintainers
> (ie Joey Hess proposal plus Raphael's) than a whole conffile tracker.

Wait, huh?  It really would be nice if even after making a small
modification to a configuration file, one didn’t have to enter a shell
and edit the configuration file on every upgrade that changes it.
But the issues are orthogonal --- why do we care which is more
reasonable to expect to finish first?

> The latter could be renamed dpkg-tracker or something.

I personally think it is more important to provide convenient command
names for users than for package maintainers, but that is my own bias.

One approach would be to let them share the name.  A user would be
allowed to move her version of a configuration file with

  dpkg-conffile mv path path
  dpkg-conffile rm path

A package maintainer would use a different syntax to ask
dpkg-conffile to respect the user’s wishes, so:

  dpkg-conffile --package packagename --remove-old-only mv path path
  dpkg-conffile --package packagename mv path path
  dpkg-conffile --package packagename rm path

Note that I haven’t read through the proposal carefully, though, so
there could be details I’m missing.

Jonathan