Bug#246818: Deleting conffiles in maintainer scripts and the need to resurrect them later...

[Florent Rougon <f.rougon@free.fr>]

Hi,

Frank Küster <frank@debian.org> wrote:

> - Do not remove those files any more, just let them lie around,
>   cluttering the directory. Ugly, but we are on the safe side should we
>   ever need one again

OK. Perhaps one should modify the version shipped in the package in this
case to add a comment saying the file is not used anymore. Yes, this
will cause a modified conffile prompt, but what is the more annoying
behavior? Yet another conffile prompt, or desperately trying to have one
program work the way you want by modifying what appears to be a
configuration file relevant to this program and repeateldy seeing
nothing happen, whatever change you can make to the file? I prefer the
former, but I would be surprised to learn that noone prefers the latter.

> - Move the files to some other directory (like
>   /etc/texmf/dvips/obsoletemaps/), being able to copy them back in
>   future postinst, should we need them. Complicated and perhaps
>   error-prone, but it gives a cleaner /etc/texmf/dvips.

Mmm, perhaps I didn't understand you. You mean, moving a conffile in a
maintainer script?

> On the other hand, we could also ask why we consider font-specific map
> files to be configuration files at all. Of course there can be
> situations where one wants to change something there in order to get a
> different behaviour of some program. But that's also possible with
> nearly every text file in /usr/share/, and itself not a sufficient
> argument for a file to be a configuration file. If I want to change the
> behavior of gnus.el, I make a copy in /usr/local/share (or somewhere
> else) and change the copy. 

I think this is a good question. Local modifications to map files can be
made under /usr/local, so if their being conffiles causes problems to
the package maintainers or the users (/etc/texmf/dvips cluttering?), one
should consider having them normal files under /usr/share/texmf only.

> Of course this does not apply for the generated map files and for the
> config* files.

Well, since they should be automatically generated and should therefore
not be manually modified under "normal" conditions, one could argue they
shouldn't be visible under /etc either... Just like updmap.cfg that is
found under /var/lib/texmf/web2c/ and *not* under /etc.

-- 
Florent