Re: xdm config help

[Paul Mackinney <paul@mackinney.net>]

Karl E. Jorgensen declaimed:
> On Mon, Oct 21, 2002 at 03:20:11PM +0100, Karl E. Jorgensen wrote:
> There might well be a bug in there somewhere, for the life of me I
> cannot see what package owns /etc/X11/default-display-manager - it does
> not seem to be managed by [dpkg].
> ... 
> There seem to be debconf bits for it in both gdm and xdm though.
> That bit of code is present in in /etc/init.d/gdm too - and I would not
> be surprised to find it in other display managers.
> 
> My personal preference would be to invent the package:
>     x-display-manager-admin-utils 
> 
> 		and stick the code in here, and let [a-z]dm Depend: on
> 		x-display-manager-admin-utils.
> 
> 		Perhaps somebody can do that? I'll be applying to becoming a Debian
> 		Maintainer (again) soon, and it looks like a relatively easy
> 		project. On
> 		the downside, it requires a fair bit of coordination with the
> 		maintainers of [a-z]dm.
> 

I have to say that adding a new package doesn't strike me as the best
solution--surely Debian has enough packages already? What if we found
out what package(s) create the thing and include the file in the package 
rather than having a script create it?

 From the following dpkg man entry:

  dpkg -L | --listfiles package ...
    List files installed to your system from package.
    However, note that files created by package-specific
    installation-scripts are not listed.
  
I deduce that the file is created by an installation-script. Where's the
utility to parse the scripts & list the files they create? [a joke,
surely there are so many ways to create files with bash, perl, etc. that
this isn't really possible...]

But I don't mean to pick nits, if you're willing to work as a 
package maintainer and a new package is the right thing, then you have 
my thanks and support. That 'coordination with the maintainers' you 
speak of is surely one of the toughest parts of the job.

Regards,
Paul
-- 
Paul Mackinney
paul@mackinney.net