Re: Removing former conffiles

[Frank Küster <frank@debian.org>]

Don Armstrong <don@debian.org> wrote:

> On Mon, 06 Feb 2006, Frank Küster wrote:
>> - if it is changed, either keep it and insert a comment at its
>>   beginning that it is unused, or move/rename it. In all cases where
>>   the file's presence could have a bad effect, I renamed or moved
>>   it.
>
> Just a word of caution here: If the administrator has modified the
> file, you should not rename or move it, as they may know better than
> you what they're doing. A proper course of action would be warning
> them, and/or offering to remove the files in question via debconf.

If I know that the file will no longer be read at all, there's no point
in pretending that it still have an effect.  Renaming it makes this
completely clear.  If it's just a "the file is no longer needed", then
of course I need not do anything, but a warning, debconf question, or
just an entry in NEWS.Debian would be good.

There's yet an other case:  If the postinst script finds that a
conf(iguration) file has a setting that will break later postinst
action, and result in an unconfigured package, then it should fail right
away and give an explanation (and not try to proceed and fail later with
a much less understandable error message).

> Additionally, you should check to make sure whether you're upgrading
> from a version after this transition; if that's the case, you
> shouldn't rename/delete either.

Yes, that should always be done.  

Regards, Frank
-- 
Frank Küster
Single Molecule Spectroscopy, Protein Folding @ Inst. f. Biochemie, Univ. Zürich
Debian Developer (teTeX)