Re: policy violation and bug reports. - some resolution?
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On 25 Feb 1998, James Troup wrote:
> Joey Hess <joey@kitenet.net> writes:
>
> > > Anyway, I think this is a bug in dpkg (not asking about removed
> > > conffiles) and I don't think it is right to make a program to
> > > "benefit" from bugs in other programs...
> >
> > I've always hated this behavoir, but it's my understanding it's
> > intentional (a feature, not a bug ;-).
>
> "However, note that dpkg will not replace a conffile that was removed
> by the user (or by a script). This is necessary because with some
> programs a missing file produces an effect hard or impossible to
> achieve in another way, so that a missing file needs to be kept that
> way if the user did it." (Packaging Manual 9.1)
Yes, this is what dpkg currently does. But being documented does
not mean it is always a good idea.
I didn't say it was an error not to *replace* a conffile when it didn't
exist.
I said (IMHO) it was an error not to *ask* the user about creating a new
file or leave the file in its inexisting state.
If dpkg asks about keeping the conffile in place or replacing it with a
newer version, it should also ask the user about keeping the
file in inexistant state or create a new one. The current behaviour is
clearly not appropriate for many configuration files.
BTW: I had a bug report against base-files for not creating
/root/.bash_profile when it did not exist...
Yes, this only proves that conffiles are not appropriate for
/root/.bash_profile...
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