Bug#40766: Rewrite of "configuration files" section

[Stefan Gybas <cab@studbox.uni-stuttgart.de>]

Hamish Moffatt wrote:

> * the maintainer scripts should not alter the conffile of ANY package,
>   including the one the scripts belong to.
> 
> * the program itself in the package may modify the conffiles of other
>   packages (eg if the program is an editor or dotfiles-type package).

Why is a program in the package allowed to change a conffile but not
the postinst? The final result is the same: dpkg might ask if I want to
replace the configuration file when I upgrade the package.

I, for example, maintain gnujsp (a Java servlet) which depends on 
libapache-mod-jserv (a Servlet engine for Apache, also maintained by me).
gnujsp's postinst modifies some conffiles of JServ so can be used right
after it is installed (all changes are reverted when gnujsp is purged).

With your suggestion, I would have to move some parts of gnujsp's postinst
to a script into the JServ package and call that script from the postinst
instead. Whenever I need to make a change to this script, I have to upload
a new JServ package (or even worse ask another maintainer to update the
script if I was not the JServ maintainer).

As stated above, the result is the same: We have a modified configuration
file in both cases. So what should I do? Let the user do the changes to
the configuration files? Ask a lot of questions in the postinst? IMHO the
automatic setup in the postinst is a very user friendly solution.

-- 
Stefan Gybas