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Re: preferred method for coexistence of debconf- and manual parts in conffiles?



Colin Watson <cjwatson@debian.org> schrieb:

> On Wed, Nov 05, 2003 at 03:03:24PM +0100, Frank Küster wrote:
>> Hi,
>> 
>> if a package wants to use debconf to manage a configuration file, but
>> still let the user have the option to manually add entries - is there a
>> preferred way how to do this?
>
> Have you read debconf-devel(7), namely the section on "Config file
> handling"? If not, do.

I have, but parsing language.dat is not easy. However, it _is_
possible. 

>> Here's why I come to ask the question: Recently, a bug was filed against
>> tetex-bin, #209395, criticizing that a configuration file, language.dat,
>> is not in /etc, but under /var.
>
> Yeuch, tetex is the most disastrous example of configuration file
> handling I can think of. I keep being repeatedly asked strange questions
> about merging configuration files I know for certain I've never touched,
> and asked incomprehensible debconf questions about files I don't care
> about.

I guess this is because it's hard to both present a mostly-working
starting configuration for newbies and keep the configuration
possibilities for TeXperts. And from a slow migration to debconf which
involves more and more files

(BTW, I'm more annoyed by being asked by dpkg that conffiles where
changed "by me or a script" that I didn't even know they existed)

However, if you find questions incomprehensible, we're happy to read
your bug reports.

>> He should have answered "no" to the question wether debconf should
>> manage this file if he wants to do that.
>
> I have to say that I'm coming to believe that anything that talks about
> "debconf managing this file" is a bug. If the user makes changes to the
> file, I think it's the package's responsibility to cope with that. 

I'll have a look at ucf - hopefully this is a solution for that.

Thank you,
Frank
-- 
Frank Küster, Biozentrum der Univ. Basel
Abt. Biophysikalische Chemie



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