Bug#412668: debian-policy: extended 10.7 to other forms of configuration (e.g. symlinks)
On Tue, Feb 27, 2007 at 11:17:51AM +0100, Vincent Lefevre wrote:
> [Severity set as important, because the lack of a requirement can
> have serious implications, including security ones.]
> Configuration is sometimes represented in another way than contents
> of a configuration file, e.g. a set of symbolic links. However there
> is absolutely no reason to regard such information as less important
> than the contents of a configuration file. This is particularly true
> for 10.7.3, e.g. the Debian policy should require that local changes
> in symbolic links (or whatever that can represent a configuration)
> must be preserved during an upgrade.
> An example is bug 412159 that is not regarded as a release-critical
> bug though one of the settings is not preserved, because the
> corresponding configuration is represented by a symbolic link
> somewhere in /etc.
> Note: though in this bug, the lost configuration is just one bit of
> information, this is still annoying, and in general, symbolic links
> can also represent much more information and possibly configuration
> related to security/privacy settings.
Policy requires that packages preserve local changes to *configuration
files*. What you're asking for is that packages be required unconditionally
to preserve *application behavior*. This is not a reasonable standard to
set in policy. Package behavior changes whenever upstream changes the
built-in defaults; it changes whenever a new version of an unmodified
conffile is installed; it changes whenever a config file is upgraded with
ucf; it changes when Debian packagers make adjustments to try to better
integrate with the operating system.
In the case of bug #412159 I agree it's a bug to delete a symlink that the
user has created by hand. But I don't see any realistic way to enforce this
through policy; nor do I think the impact of the bug is so severe that it
needs to be enforced in policy.
--
Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS
Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world.
vorlon@debian.org http://www.debian.org/
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