[Pkg-electronics-devel] Bug#905669: geda-gaf: maintscript accesses internal dpkg database

[Guillem Jover]

Source: geda-gaf
Source-Version: 1:1.8.2-9
Severity: important
User: debian-dpkg at lists.debian.org
Usertags: dpkg-db-access-blocker

Hi!

This package contains a maintainer script [M], which directly accesses
the dpkg internal database.

  [M] debian/geda-symbols.postrm

This a problem for multiple reasons. Even though the layout and format
of the dpkg database is administrator friendly, and it's expected that
those might need to mess with it, in case of emergency, this interface
does not extend to other programs besides the dpkg suite of tools. The
admindir can also be configured differently at dpkg build or run-time.
And finally, the contents and its format, will be changing in the near
future.

Please, switch to use the public interface to fetch the conffiles list
for any package «dpkg-query -f '${Conffiles}\n' -W <pkgname>», instead
of accessing the database directly, because the .conffiles files never
get updated even after conffile take overs by another package. Or just
remove the code snippet if it's not relevant anymore.

Thanks,
Guillem