Re: Clarification of Policy and Packaging manuals requested
Joey Hess wrote:
> The problem with this that have came up during this discussion was
> that some packages have files like this, that are a few MB in size
> (ie, the lambdamoo database, the dosemu hdimage). These files are
> obviously way to big to be generated by the postinst. Manoj made
> several suggestions to work around this (ie, install the file in
> /usr/, copy to /var in the postinst if it isn't already in /var),
> but I have objections to all of them.
>
> I've got no problem with using this method for trivial things like the game
> score files, though.
I have been following this discussion silently, and I've been convinced
that the way Maelstrom currently handles its score file (as a conffile)
is wrong.
If the scorefile ever changes format, then I will have to provide a
converter in any case. Losing scores is bad!
I like the approach of installing the default scorefile under a
different name and copying it in the postinst. This has the advantage
of giving the user an easy way to restore the original defaults
(because the default scorefile is still around). Currently the only
option Maelstrom offers is to wipe the scorefile entirely.
Maelstrom includes *two* default scorefiles, an all-time-high one and
its real default with a single high score and a number of low ones.
Currently I install the latter one, because that's what the upstream
Makefile does. But the all-time-high seems more fun to play against.
I think I will pick the all-time-high one as the one to use by default,
and install the other one so that it is available as an alternative.
The postinst should not ask any questions about this, and it should not
do anything if a scores file already exists. The existence of these
scorefiles in /usr will be explained in the README.Debian.
Now I need to find out whether dpkg will remove the scorefile if I
drop it from the package list.
(Why am I explaining all this? So that you can pick it apart, that's why :)
Richard Braakman
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