[debian-lan-devel] Maintaining Debian LAN as a set of packages

[Afif Elghraoui]

Hi, Jonas and all,

[I've just subscribed to debian-lan-devel, so no more need to Cc me]

على السبت  6 آب 2016 ‫13:31، كتب Jonas Smedegaard:
> Quoting Afif Elghraoui (2016-08-06 21:13:24)
>> I was wondering what your thoughts would be on maintaining Debian LAN 
>> as a set of packages, sort of like how the Debian installer is 
>> maintained.
> [...]
>> We can make use of the debhelper plugin config-package-dev for 
>> modifying or replacing configuration files (while diverting the 
>> originals) provided by existing packages (like dhcpd.conf).
> 
> Sounds like packages in the style of DebAthena - a project you seem 
> already aware¹ of.
> 
> Please beware that DPKG does *not* support diversion of conffiles.

Oh, ok. I see this in the policy now:

~~~
Do not attempt to divert a conffile, as dpkg does not handle it well.
~~~https://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ap-pkg-diversions.html


> Possibly that is the reason DebAthena lives only outside of Debian.  
> Problems caused by such too smart configfile handling may only surface 
> when upgrading an installed system to a later stable release, as 
> discussed in bug#311188 - and discussed² some years ago specifically in 
> relation to DebAthena.
> 

Many thanks for these links.

> Your idea sounds interesting to me³, but I doubt it is possible to do in 
> a way that is robust enough for Debian.

Well, I think it can be robust with CI or some other feasible efforts,
but it seems that it can't be policy compliant. The approach I'm talking
about would not need conffiles to have special treatment by dpkg, and
that they should not be edited directly on the system. This would also
remove the need for ucf and etckeeper.


>  Are your packages available 
> somewhere public?
> 
> 

Unfortunately not, but they are not really so advanced because I tried
to minimize deviations because we don't have a dedicated sysadmin at my
site (a research lab). I can make an independent and public proof of
concept, though. I still think this is a worthwhile approach, but not as
a pure blend in the current state.

Thanks and regards
Afif

-- 
Afif Elghraoui | عفيف الغراوي
http://afif.ghraoui.name