Re: dotdee: a proposal for improving conffile management in Debian

[Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com>]

Raphael Hertzog wrote:

> There's quite some work left to define the interface that the
> dpkg-conffile-handler programs must implement, and to the way the override
> would work

Well, yeah. :)

FWIW I don't think this is inconsistent with what Dustin was
suggesting --- dotdee would just be one example of a
dpkg-conffile-handler program.  So the question becomes, where do the
pristine conffiles get written, and when does the conffile handler
program get called to deal with them.

I confess that I'd prefer a hook specified on the commandline over
alternatives, since it would make experimenting with e.g. debugging
options a little easier.  Defaults for commandline options can be
specified in dpkg.conf so I don't think this means any loss of
convenience.

I'd also prefer if, at least to start, there is only one conffile
handling program so people can experiment with what a good stackable
interface looks like (those are hard) outside of dpkg.

Just my two cents,
Jonathan