---------- Forwarded message ----------
From:
Dieter Adriaenssens <dieter.adriaenssens@gmail.com>Date: 2017-02-05 11:44 GMT+01:00
Subject: Re: Improving documentation on conffiles in Debian Policy and Debian New Maintainers' Guide
To: Stuart Prescott <
stuart@debian.org>
Hi Stuart,
Thanks for the reply and apologies for the late response.
On Mon, Dec 26, 2016 at 04:13:10PM +1100, Stuart Prescott wrote:
> Hi Dieter,
>
> Thanks for the suggestions.
>
> > 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].
>
> Your assertion that all files in /etc are checked is not correct. dpkg only
> checks the configuration files that the binary package has listed as
> conffiles.
>
> However, by default, the debhelper build system (via dh_installdeb)
> automatically lists all files that are going to be installed into /etc as
> conffiles -- that might make it look like all files in /etc are checked but
> the logic and control of the situation are reversed. The "by default" is
> important here; files in /etc are added as conffiles only if the maintainer
> does not take other action. Many packages include files in /etc that are not
> conffiles but are handled in some other fashion such as using ucf.
Thanks for the clarification, until now it was not clear to me what the
exact role of dh_installdeb was. Learned something new here. :)
> As a general point, be careful about whether you're talking about source
> packages or binary packages. For source packages, dh_installdeb tool allows
> you to have debian/conffiles inside your source package to control what is a
> conffile, while otherwise everything in /etc will become a conffile in the
> binary package. For binary packages, only the files listed in
> control.tar.xz:conffiles are conffiles.
>
> (I suspect, this is actually the root of your confusion.)
Yes, thanks for clarifying. :)
> > 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.'
>
> It might make sense to document this in the new maintainer's guide -- it
> would certainly make sense to document this in dh_installdeb(1) where the
> format of this file is not specified at all. Perhaps you could file a bug
> against debhelper for that, suggesting a cross-reference to the deb-
> conffiles(5) page? (It would also be good if the new maintainer's guide
> could point at the documentation rather than duplicate it so that people
> learn where these things are actually documented -- perhaps you could assist
> with that too?)
Sure, I'll open a bug to improve the dh_installdeb manpage.
Kind regards,
Dieter