Hi, On Montag, 4. Januar 2010, Russ Allbery wrote: > There are several arguments that say that such data shouldn't be deleted > on purge. I don't know how persuasive they are. I'll answer them in reverse order :-) > * Whether it makes sense given Debian semantics or not, users just don't > expect removing packages to, from their perspective, destroy data. > Other distributions don't seem to do this. We are talking about "purging", not "removal", thus I consider this argument invalid. I expect "purge" to remove all traces of a package from the system. > * It's sometimes necessary to purge a package and reinstall it to fix some > weird problem, or if not necessary at least expedient. For example, if > one accidentally deletes a configuration file, one of the faster ways to > get the original configuration file shipped with the package back is to > purge and reinstall the package. It saves unpacking the package > somewhere and manually copying out the configuration file. If purging > the package deletes databases, this removes that tactic as an option. Having a working backup+restore in place is probably a way better tactic :-) I don't see how such a "workaround" should justify keeping cruft on millions of properly administrated systems. > * The data is not created by the package, in the sense that it's not > created automatically by package installation. It's created by the > user's use of the package and is the user's data. It's not clear that > the mysql-server package, for instance, owns all the data in the default > database location and has the right to be purging it. Basically see my answers to previous two arguments. IMHO purging should do what it's designed to do. If a package has data worth saving, IMHO one shouldnt use purge or use a backup. regards, Holger
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