Re: Policy rewrite: chaps 11-13

[Chris Lawrence <lawrencc@debian.org>]

On Apr 02, Julian Gilbey wrote:
> 11.9 Statically allocated ids:
> 
>      If you need a statically allocated id, you must ask for a user or
>      group id from the base system maintainer, and must not release
>      the package until you have been allocated one.  Once you have
>      been allocated one you must make the package depend on a version
>      of the base system with the id present in `/etc/passwd' or
>      `/etc/group', or alternatively arrange for your package to create
>      the user or group itself with the correct id (using `adduser') in
>      its pre- or post-installation script (the >>>latter<<< is to be
>      preferred if it is possible).
> 
>      What is the "latter"?  Is it the latter alternative ("or
>      alternatively ...") or the postinst instead of the preinst?  I
>      would guess that it means "postinst is preferred to preinst", but
>      I may be wrong here.

Presumably, it means that using adduser is preferred over the
dependency on the correct version of base-passwd.  That's the way I
read the paragraph, at least.  Having said that, I suspect that it's
more robust to do the adduser in the postinst than in the preinst,

So either interpretation seems valid and reasonable.  Maybe both
should be formally codified in the document...


Chris
-- 
Chris Lawrence <lawrencc@debian.org> - http://www.lordsutch.com/chris/