[Debian GNUstep maintainers] Bug#1094636: dpkg conffile modified warnings on upgrades

[Yavor Doganov]

Michael Biebl wrote:
> Package: gnustep-base-runtime

Thanks for the report!

> Configuration file '/etc/GNUstep/gdomap_probes'
>  ==> File on system created by you or by a script.
>  ==> File also in package provided by package maintainer.

> This is unfortunate, as this will affect every user on upgrades,
> whether they have modified /etc/GNUstep/gdomap_probes or not.

I realized this when I made the change but couldn't figure any other
sane way.  The intention is indeed to preserve the file if the user
has modified it.

> I'm not a aware of a good way to turn a postinst generated configuration
> file into a proper conffile, but one thing you could do is store a hash
> (or a list of known hashes) of the postinst generated configuration file
> and remove /etc/GNUstep/gdomap_probes in *preinst* if it has not been
> modified by the user.
> 
> # md5sum /etc/GNUstep/gdomap_probes
> 0350e9dc3fb96577e6cc2d8873f2fde5  /etc/GNUstep/gdomap_probes

But mine is different (bookworm, i386) and I haven't modified it:

$ md5sum /etc/GNUstep/gdomap_probes 
d9d712469c9cec8898136e52142a19d1  /etc/GNUstep/gdomap_probe

Since the old postinst runs "hostname -i" (bad idea, I know) I guess
the file is going to be different across various systems, depending
on the configuration.