Bug#822733: tzdata: Drop /etc/timezone

[Luca Boccassi]

On Sun, 29 Jan 2023 at 14:45, Michael Biebl <biebl at debian.org> wrote:
>
> Am 29.01.2023 um 15:38 schrieb Luca Boccassi:
> > On Sun, 29 Jan 2023, 13:15 Michael Biebl, <biebl at debian.org
> > <mailto:biebl at debian.org>> wrote:
> >
> >     Am 28.01.2023 um 02:12 schrieb Luca Boccassi:
> >      > I'm looking at this again, because handling /etc/timezone is one
> >     of the
> >      > last large technical debt patches that we carry in Debian for
> >      > src:systemd, and we want to drop it for Trixie.
> >      > The idea is to add a tmpfiles.d entry in the systemd package that
> >      > unconditionally deletes /etc/timezone if present. If someone wants to
> >      > keep using it, they can simply override the tmpfiles.d entry with the
> >      > usual mechanisms.
> >      >
> >      > So, could you please reconsider the proposal to stop creating it
> >     if it
> >      > doesn't exist (but keep updating if it does) in the tzdata
> >     postinst as
> >      > above for Trixie?
> >
> >     I'm a bit confused: If you forcefully want to delete /etc/timezone
> >     via a
> >     tmpfiles snippet, why let tzdata update an existing /etc/timezone?
> >
> >
> > Because it can be overridden as mentioned, so in case there are unknown
> > corner cases where it's still needed, a drop-in can be added to avoid
> > deleting the file and it will still get updated. In the future we can
> > then consider removing this as well.
> >
>
> I would prefer, if all this is handled within tzdata.
> - It should stop creating /etc/timezone
> - It should delete /etc/timezone on upgrades as a one-time action
> - If users manually create the file afterwards (say touch /etc/timezone)
> a dpkg-reconfigure tzdata would update the file.
>
> This should all be under tzdata's control.

Without the tmpfiles.d in src:systemd, we can't drop the patch for one
release I'd think?