Bug#246818: Deleting conffiles in maintainer scripts and the need to resurrect them later...
Florent Rougon <f.rougon@free.fr> schrieb:
> 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.
There is an other problem with putting a remark into that file: If we
write into it "This file is no longer used", why shouldn't local
administrators delete it, then?
For our problem with resurrected files, it doesn't make any difference
whether it was the admin or a maintainer script who deleted it.
We could well keep deleting it. We need a mechanism to resurrect it,
anyway. Probably involving a grep over
/var/lib/dpkg/info/tetex-{base,extra}.conffiles.
Regards, Frank
--
Frank Küster, Biozentrum der Univ. Basel
Abt. Biophysikalische Chemie
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