On Wed, 2017-04-26 at 07:53 -0400, Tom H wrote: > > On Sun, Apr 23, 2017 at 3:00 PM, Wouter Verhelst <wou...@debian.org> wrote: > > > > The "packages drop files in /usr/*, sysadmins override in /etc" way of > > doing things is prevalent in the RPM world; in Debian, however, we > > traditionally have packages drop files in /etc, and let the maintainer > > change them in place. This is possible, because our package management > > system deals better with changed files than does RPM (which must work > > silently, rather than confirming things with the user). > > s/package management system deals better/package management system > deals differently/ > > rpm doesn't have a problem with config file handling and deals with > config files in a similar way that dpkg uses the "conffile" attribute > to deal with them. rpm spec files use two (one-and-a-half?) macros: > > - "%config": "foo.conf" is replaced in an upgrade and saved as > "foo.conf.rpmsave"; > > - "%config(noreplace)": "foo.conf" isn't replaced in an upgrade and > the new "foo.conf" is installed as "foo.conf.rpmnew".
I didn't know about this, and I'm pleased to see that this is (now)
possible. Is this documented somewhere? (I've never been able to find
documentation of RPM macros that isn't very old and incomplete.)
> So rpm isn't a factor;
It is, because rpm is non-interactive and the above choice has to be
made by the packager and not the adminsitrator.
Ben.
> upstreams drop files into "/usr/lib" because
> Red Hat is pushing the concept of all/almost-all distro-provided files
> in "/usr".
>
> [OT: If I've *had* a complaint about
> "/usr/lib/{modules-load.d,sysctl.d,tmpfiles.d}", it's that, when I
> first looked for them on Debian, I expected them to be under "/lib"
> and not "/usr/lib" given that systemd installs its boot-time files
> under "/lib/systemd".]
--
Ben Hutchings
All extremists should be taken out and shot.
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