Re: Removal of data on purge (Was: OpenMRS package is ready, I believe)
Hi Guys:
Sorry I've read all your emails but I'm a little slow on the uptake.
Last night I actually whipped something up that almost works with
debconf in postrm script, and there seemed to be some precedent for
doing this:
http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2005/36/
"Purging Database Data? Philipp Kern wondered under which
circumstances user-supplied data should be removed upon package
removal. Joey Hess confirmed that using debconf during postrm purge is
fine as long as the script checks whether debconf is installed and
falls back to reasonable behaviour if it isn't."
http://da2i.univ-lille1.fr/cgi-bin/man/man2html?debconf-devel+7
http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/hardy/man7/debconf-devel.7.html
"Note that if your package’s sole use of debconf is in the postrm, you
should make your package’s postinst source
/usr/share/debconf/confmodule, to give debconf a chance to load up your
templates file into its database. Then the templates will be available
when your package is being purged."
This implies it's okay to have sole use of debconf be in postrm.
http://www.mail-archive.com/debian-mentors@lists.debian.org/msg37547.html
"If you use debconf, you should really ask that question when the package
is removed, not when its conffiles are purged, though you may only want
to delete the database files on purge. The rationale for this is that
there is no mechanism in place to guarantee that a certain other
package, in this instance debconf, is installed at purge time (though
the assumption may be fairly safe). The least bad solution I can see is
to ask at remove time, store the result outside of debconf
(/etc/default) and kill the db on purge if requested."
This also implies its okay to ask at remove time, whether on remove or purge.
But the Debian Policy Manual seems definitive it is _not_ okay so I'll
go with that:
http://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-binary.html#s-maintscriptprompt
"Any necessary prompting should almost always be confined to the
config or postinst script."
(and postrm is not mentioned)
Thx
Misha
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