Re: Manual edit of texmf.cnf not recommended

[Frank Küster <frank@kuesterei.ch>]

severity 285198 serious
thanks

Hilmar Preusse <hille42@web.de> wrote:

> In your postinst script you write:
>
> # Fixes /etc/texmf/texmf.cnf.
> # Remove the following line when Debian's teTeX package comes with
> # the same setting.
> if ! /bin/grep -q '^T1FONTS.*;$TEXMF/fonts/hbf//' /etc/texmf/texmf.cnf; then
>     /usr/bin/perl -pi -e 's|^(T1FONTS.*)$|$1;\$TEXMF/fonts/hbf//|;' \
> 	/etc/texmf/texmf.cnf
> fi

This code is a violation of Policy.  First of all, texmf.cnf is still a
configuration file of tex-common, and cjk-latex messes with that file.
If we add $TEXMF/fonts/hbf to T1FONTS because some package *needs* it,
it would break that package.  Second, it changes that file without
asking the maintainer, thus violation Policy 

,---- 10.7.3 Behavior
| Configuration file handling must conform to the following behavior:
| 
|     * local changes must be preserved during a package upgrade, and
`----

(here it wouldn't be "upgrade", but new install, since it acts on a
configuration file of a different package).

Moreover, the code assumes that /etc/texmf/texmf.cnf does exist.  We
have discussed several times to move this chimera (now both a generated
and a configuration file) to /var/lib/texmf.  If we do this, cjk-latex's
postinst will fail

Regards, Frank


-- 
Frank Küster
Inst. f. Biochemie der Univ. Zürich
Debian Developer