[PKG-Openstack-devel] Bug#773692: Please properly remove conffiles

[Gaudenz Steinlin]

Hi


Thomas Goirand <zigo at debian.org> writes:

> Note: removing the BTS from the discussion.

Don't know why, but if you prefer. I think this belongs to the bug
report.

>
> On 12/23/2014 01:21 AM, Gaudenz Steinlin wrote:
>>> I am unsure why it was still there on the DSA machine. Maybe because it
>>> was modified by the DSA? Or because you didn't do --purge when
>>> upgrading? Anyway, it's normal CONFFILES as much as I know.
>> 
>> No there is a bug in your package.
>
> I agree. But see below.
>
>> Nobody should have to use --purge to
>> remove unmodified conffiles on upgrade that are no longer part of the
>> package. Instead of just dropping these files from the package you
>> should use dpkg-maintscript-helper like this in the preinst, postinst
>> and postrm maintainer scripts:
>> 
>> dpkg-maintscript-helper rm_conffile \
>>                conffile prior-version package -- "$@"
>> 
>> See the dpkg-maintscript-helper manpage section on "Removing a conffile"
>> for further details. There is also more documentation about how to
>> properly move conffiles from one package to another in the Debian wiki.
>
> I don't think it is reasonable to introduce this kind of change during
> the freeze. The potential harm of doing something bad is IMO greater
> than the good we're trying to add.

I disagree. Using the helper seems like a lot safer to me than the code
you just added yesterday at least for ceilometer. Your code just
unconditionally removes the old config file. This is wrong. It should
only be removed if it was unchanged and renamed to .dpkg-bak otherwise.

And your code will fail if the config files are no longer present (if
the administrator removed them, if you are reinstalling the same
version, ...).

I don't want to blame you, everyone does mistakes and getting this code
right is hard. This is exactly the reason why these helpers exist. So
please use them to avoid these mistakes.

>
>> Also a note in NEWS.Debian about the changes location would be nice.
>
> That is easier and less error prone.

I did not suggest this as an alternative to the dpkg-maintscript-helper
but as an additional hint that would be nice.

>
>> I'm not reopening these bug reports as I don't want to play bug
>> ping-pong, but I firmly believe that there is a bug in your package that
>> should be fixed.

I was under teh impression yesterday that only the juno branch was
affected. I now see that this is wrong and also the icehouse branch is
affected. You should thus really reopen the bugs! IMO this should be
fixed before the release.

Gaudenz
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 810 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/openstack-devel/attachments/20141223/df6d8072/attachment.sig>