Bug#688736: w3c-linkchecker: modifies conffiles (policy 10.7.3): /etc/w3c/checklink.conf

[Nicholas Bamber]

On 26/09/12 07:35, Ivan Shmakov wrote:
>>>>>> Russ Allbery <rra at debian.org> writes:
>>>>>> Ivan Shmakov <oneingray at gmail.com> writes:
> 
>  >> What bothers me more, however, is that the ${CFG_TMP} filename bears
>  >> an utterly generic “.tmp” suffix, and should, for one reason or
>  >> another, such a filename exist at the time .postinst is run, we're
>  >> going to silently overwrite it.
> 
>  >> Thus, my preference would be to use mktemp(1), e. g.:
> 
>  >> +        CFG_TMP=$(mktemp -- /etc/w3c/.checklink.conf.XXXXXXXX)
> 
>  >> TIA.
> 
>  > Another standard approach here is to use .dpkg-new, which is used by
>  > dpkg for conffiles for a similar purpose and which local
>  > administrators are therefore used to seeing if it gets left behind
>  > for some reason.
> 
> 	Indeed.
> 

I am generally happy with the patch (and the dpkg-new suggestion) on
inspection. However I feel slightly queezy about the "db_version" stuff.
It seems likely to be harmless. However I can find only the briefest of
documentation about it. It can return an error which presumably should
be checked. I can't find anything in Policy saying it should be used or
any recommendations on why it is advisable.