Bug#61308: PROPOSAL] Initializing databases by using conffiles.

[Santiago Vila <sanvila@unex.es>]

On Wed, 29 Mar 2000, Julian Gilbey wrote:

> I think this proposal is silly: for something like the cases you
> mention, it is obvious that they should not be conffiles, but should
> be created by the postinst if they do not already exist.  It would
> clearly be very stupid for these to be conffiles.  In particular,
> given the update-mime program, /etc/mailcap should obviously not be a
> conffile.  And as it is, the maintainer should change that -- but
> changing policy isn't going to make that happen any more quickly.

I also think this proposal should not be needed, but considering that
nobody managed so far to convince the mime-support maintainer that
/etc/mailcap being a conffile is really bad, it seems it is. What is
obvious for you and me may not be obvious for everybody. This is one of
the reasons policy exist in the first place.

If it is obvious for you that this is the right thing to do, then please
second the proposal. Having something like this written in policy will not
only help us to convince the maintainer of mime-support that this is
indeed a bug (currently he has it as a wishlist item), but also will
help us to prevent similar cases in the future.

I still remember the days when /etc/passwd was a conffile..., this
happened from november 1996 to september 1997 at least. Are you really
sure this is "obvious" for everybody? I am not.

Thanks.

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