Bug#34296: etc/apt/sources.list is a conffile

[Santiago Vila <sanvila@unex.es>]

On 10 Mar 1999, Rob Browning wrote:

> Santiago Vila <sanvila@unex.es> writes:
> 
> > Since this file is commonly changed by the user to point to a near Debian
> > mirror, dpkg asks very often about replacing this file by the version
> > provided inside the .deb, which is not usually what the user wants.
> > Normally the user ends up answering No all the time.
> 
> dpkg isn't supposed to ask if the file hasn't changed upstream.  If it
> has, presumably there's a reason, and the user might want to know
> about it (new features, new defaults, whatever).  This is one reason
> we have conffiles.

Yes, but in this case there is not an /etc/apt/sources.list file which
satisfies everybody *in practice* (putting a well known debian mirror
satisfies everybody in theory, but I think we should take in account
that the US is far from Europe, from Japan, etc in terms of bandwidth).
Most people will change it to point to a local mirror.

I think it is much better to prompt the user only when the format of
the file changes, instead of doing it always.

Thanks.

-- 
 "e58820910d4ed7bb76c898f315daa8e3" (a truly random sig)