Re: PROPOSAL: Extrafiles (was Re: Conffiles...)
On 17 Apr 1998, Adam P. Harris wrote:
> Christian Schwarz <schwarz@monet.m.isar.de> writes:
> > On Sat, 18 Apr 1998, Anthony Towns wrote:
> > > On Fri, Apr 17, 1998 at 12:34:18AM +0200, Christian Schwarz wrote:
> > > > I agree that the extra files should *not* be purged
> > > > automatically. However, dpkg should not forget about them.
>
> > > I disagree.
> > [snip]
>
> > > What would dpkg's continued knowledge of removed packages' extrafiles
> > > gain?
>
> > If was thinking of the following: the current doc-base version
> > creates some `extra files' in other package's /usr/doc
> > directories--for example, the .dhelp files. Usually, the package
> > should call doc-base in its prerm script and doc-base will remove
> > these files again. However, if either the maintainer forgot to call
> > doc-base in its prerm script, or if there is a bug in doc-base,
> > these files would be left on the system.
>
> Christian, your theory may be sound (I don't know) but your example is
> bad. Actually, nowadays doc-base will allow multiple document ids
> to merge into the same .dhelp file, and will even take a non-doc-base
> .dhelp file and add some doc-base entries into it.
[snip]
No, that's not the point. (Please correct me if I'm wrong again.) If a
package does not provide a .dhelp file itself, doc-base will create this
file automatically. Only doc-base knows about that file, and if everything
is working correctly, doc-base will remove that file again if the package
is removed.
However, if you purge doc-base now, it will not remove that file (at
least, the latest version of doc-base I wrote would behave that way). With
that, the user would end up with a /usr/doc/foo/.dhelp file of which noone
knows about. If the foo package is removed now, dpkg will complain about
/usr/doc/foo being not empty.
Thanks,
Chris
-- Christian Schwarz
schwarz@monet.m.isar.de, schwarz@schwarz-online.com
schwarz@debian.org, schwarz@mathematik.tu-muenchen.de
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