Bug#246818: Deleting conffiles in maintainer scripts and the need to resurrect them later...
Frank Küster <frank@debian.org> wrote:
> 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?
Because the comment would tell them that if they do, they might have
problems later? Not extremely convincing, but...
> For our problem with resurrected files, it doesn't make any difference
> whether it was the admin or a maintainer script who deleted it.
Except that when the admin deleted the files, the package cannot be
blamed for not working correctly once the file is needed again.
> 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.
I have the feeling something is broken here: the argument "a conffile
deletion is a modification to the conffile, thus must be preserved on
upgrades" strikes me as striving for a uniform handling by dpkg for both
textual modifications of conffiles and deletion. Which means that the
admin should be prompted when he changed (= deleted, in our case) the
conffile and the package being upgraded has a new version of that file.
Which would allow to resurrect the conffile simply by modifying it in
the package version you want it to reappear in. If that doesn't work, I
would be inclined to think this is a dpkg bug...
--
Florent
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