On 30 Dec 2001, Thomas Bushnell, BSG wrote: > Please take a look at #99208 in the BTS, and give me some advice. > > The complaint is that there are a bunch of files in xpuzzles that > needed to be marked conffiles, but were not. Then, when that was > fixed, the result was that a whole bunch of files now got marked as > conffiles, and the result was that a bunch of user verifications > becomes necessary the first time someone upgrades. > > It seems to me that this is inherent in the task (as mentioned in > the BTS log by the previous maintainer). Accordingly, I think I > should just close the bug. > > But: is there a way to prevent the annoyance now? > > And: was there a way to prevent it in the first place (even if it's > too late now)?
If only the location but not the contents of the files changed from potato to woody, you can use the prerm to copy/move the files to the new location before dpkg realizes they didn't previously exist. If both the location and the contents changed you can keep a small database of md5sums to decide whether or not to put the new files in place in the prerm before dpkg prompts.
