Re: Can /usr/share/doc/<pkg> be deleted on upgrade ?
Hi all:
On Thursday 26 November 2009 15:00:18 Lucas B. Cohen wrote:
> Thibaut Paumard wrote:
> > Le 26 nov. 09 à 13:38, Lucas B. Cohen a écrit :
> >> Esteemed Debian mentors,
> >>
> >> Is it considered acceptable for a package to blindly delete, then
> >> recreate its entire directory under /usr/share/doc upon installation or
> >> upgrade ?
> >> [...]
> >> In worse-case scenarios, these could be illogically interpreted as
> >> explicit permission for a package to rule unilateraly on its doc
> >> directory.
> >
> > It's not illogical, I really think no other package should ever put
> > anything in another package's /usr/doc/share/<pkg>. On the other hand, I
> > think it's best to keep the content of /usr/share/doc/<pkg> static as
> > much as possible.
>
> Thank you Thibaut. I really was thinking more about a human who would
> have uncautiously stored some personal documentation in there.
> Installing a new Debian release and finding out your personal notes have
> been rm'd should IMHO not be a risk to the user, hower small.
Not personal but sysadmin related. When I want to find information about a
given package I go to /usr/share/doc/<pkg> so I find reasonable that the
local sysadmin would add notes about the package right there if needed.
In fact I never did that but I certainly would be surprised if I find my notes
vapourished if I did. After all, even on a package unistall, customized data
under /etc is preserved (that's expected by the way Debian manages config
files) but files under /var/log or /var/lib are preserved too, so why one
should expect that those under /usr/share/doc won't? A package should take
the count on exactly what files add and remove exactly those prior to remove
any directory which will only happen if such directory is empty so if I add a
file it will be preserved.
Less surprise path.
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