On Tue, Apr 23, 2002 at 08:17:09PM -0500, Dimitri Maziuk wrote:
> * Colin Watson ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) spake thusly:
> > I disagree in the general case, but you probably knew that. I think it
> > is an excellent feature of Debian that software is generally configured
> > correctly for me. When things go wrong, I file bugs.
>
> Lucky you. I get paid for herding swervers; when things go wrong
> I get fired & I don't get to eat.
So you already have backups of /etc just in case of disk corruption,
right? Thus this is a non-argument I won't waste further time arguing
against. When part of my job is setting up a new Debian box, I'm very
glad that I don't have to set up every single configuration file by
hand. If I wanted that, I'd use Slackware.
It is already considered a serious bug for a package to overwrite a
configuration file without asking when the sysadmin has changed it, so
you can stop ranting about Debian as a whole and go file bugs when
individual maintainers get it wrong. In fact, you should even be able to
see the spike in the release-critical bug graph a month or two ago when
a hundred or so serious bugs were reported about this.
Debian policy says:
11.7.3. Behavior
----------------
Configuration file handling must conform to the following behavior:
* local changes must be preserved during a package upgrade, and
* configuration files must be preserved when the package is
removed, and only deleted when the package is purged.
Note the "must".
> OTOH, every package's postinst script could, for example, begin with
> if [ "$1" == "configure" ]; then
> if [ -e /var/lib/dpkg/info/$package.DO_NOT_TOUCH ]; then
> exit 0
> fi
> ...
No need. It's easy to tell when a configuration file has been changed by
the sysadmin, and maintainers are supposed to use that.
--
Colin Watson [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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