Bug#1125967: libconfig-model-dpkg-perl: cme can add "Priority: optional"

[Dominique Dumont]

On Monday, 19 January 2026 19:01:37 Central European Standard Time you wrote:
> I thought that `cme modify dpkg-control -save` doesn't change
> anything (no modifications requested), and that `cme fix
> dpkg-control` (as used by Andreas, and also by dpt-fixup later) is
> supposed to change/fix things. Looking at cme(1p) still makes me
> believe that this is not a completely stupid assumption :)

The idea I had was more:
- update format and semantically equivalent changes so you get the same behavior from your application. The change can include:
  - dropping redundant field/value like Priority/optional
  - dripping obsolete fields
  - adding default values
  - migrating fields (i.e. when a field is deprecated and replaced by another one)
- a warning requires a user decision to accept or not the change (for instance, one should apply blindly a Standard-Version upgrade)

I may have to change the wording of cme doc ...

> Taking a step back: The idea of running `cme modify dpkg-control -save`
> early is to have the (pure) reformatting in a separate git commit
> before making any specific changes (also as atomic as possible), 

ack

> and
> I don't know what's the best way to achieve this. `cme fix` should of
> course drop "Priority: optional" as requested by Andreas; if `cme
> modify` without any arguments can be made to act no-changing that
> would be great, otherwise a `cme reformat` might be an idea? Or `cme
> run reformat`?

I'll have to think about it. That would be quite difficult as cme is designed this way:
- config tree load data as required (the read routines are called by the tree)
- config tree performs update, re-ordering and other "minor" changes
- then data is written back by the tree when needed

Disabling modification would require quite a lot of change in Config::Model core and I can't extract the read/write routines, the config tree is the backbone of cme and the read/write routine are attached to this backbone.

All the best