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

[Santiago Vila <sanvila@unex.es>]

On Wed, 29 Mar 2000, Steve Greenland wrote:

> It's already in violation of policy. From section 4.7.3:
> 
> "The other way to do it is to via the maintainer scripts. In this case,
> the configuration file must not be listed as a conffile and must not be
> part of the package distribution."
> [...]

I agree it's already in violation of policy.

The problem I see is that the paragraph is worded in positive sense:

"This is appropriate if it is possible to distribute a
default version that will work for most installations, [...]"

Perhaps not everybody reads it as "This is NOT appropriate if it is
*not* possible to distribute a default version that will work for most
installations".

> [...]
> Also, at present, all the users of update-mime are in policy violation
> (from 4.7.4):
> 
> "The maintainer scripts should not alter the conffile of any package,
> including the one the scripts belong to."
> 
> (But submitting a bug against all the "violating" packages is not the
> thing to do.)

Yes, this is what I told the maintainer. He didn't reply to that.

> > 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.
> 
> No, I oppose this proposal; It's already in policy. If it needs to be
> clarified, then the right place to do it is in 4.7.

Ok, if the consensus is that policy does not need clarification, do
we agree that bug #34294 is "normal" and not just "wishlist"? It's more
than 1 year old.

Thanks.

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