[Piuparts-devel] MBF for obsolete conffiles - help needed

[Andreas Beckmann]

On 2019-03-29 15:13, Herbert Fortes wrote:
> Here is a template for review:

Thanks!

> To: submit at bugs.debian.org
> Subject: obsolete conffiles (policy 10.7.3):
> 
> Package:
> Version:
> Severity: important
> User: debian-qa at lists.debian.org
> Usertags: piuparts
> 
> Hi,
> 
> during a test with piuparts I noticed your package has obsolete
> conffiles. There may be false positives, e.g. if a conffile was
> converted to a maintainer script managed configuration file.

Move discussion of false positives further down - it should not be that
important and frequent.

> To see the policy statement,
> https://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-files.html#behavior
> 
> 10.7.3: "[...] Obsolete configuration files without local changes
> should be removed by the package during upgrade.[11]"
> 
> [11] The dpkg-maintscript-helper tool, available from the dpkg
> package, can help for this task. (man dpkg-maintscript-helper)
> 
> To see the log file, use the link below and look for the package:
> https://piuparts.debian.org/stretch2buster/obsolete_conffiles_issue.html

No way. The (compressed) logfile has to be attached - we cannot provide
persistent URLs and the bug report should be self contained.
IMHO, vague bug reports that require maintainers to search for the
actual error somewhere else decrease the probability to get the bug fixed.

> To find the lines in the log file look for "OBSOLETE CONFFILE".

and the complete list of "OBSOLETE CONFFILE" has to be pasted in the bug
report.

> See also https://wiki.debian.org/DpkgConffileHandling

We should probably quote from the d-m-h manpage the correct choice
of the prior-version argument - that's what people frequently do wrong.


Andreas