Hi all,
In section E.1 of Debian Policy[0], conffiles[1] are mentioned as a list of configuration files that are checked for changes by 'dpkg' during an upgrade.
However, not only files in the conffiles file are checked, but automatically also every file in the /etc directory, as mentioned in the Debian New Maintainers' Guide [1].
A few suggestions :
1) To make the documentation more clear, the first paragraph in E.1 of Debian Policy[0] could be changed with either a reference to the conffiles section the Debian New Maintainers' Guide [1] or by mentioning that files in the /etc directory are automatically considered config files, fe. by rephrasing the first paragraph :
'Any files under the /etc directory are automatically flagged as configuration files, or a package may contain a control information file called conffiles. This file should be a list of filenames of configuration files needing automatic handling.'
2) It also makes sense to move the two sentences in section E.1[0] on how the conffiles are formatted to the Debian New Maintainers' Guide [1], ie. :
'This file should be a list of filenames of configuration files needing automatic handling, separated by newlines. The filenames should be absolute pathnames, and the files referred to should actually exist in the package.'
Comments, suggestions and improvements are welcome.