[Pkg-sysvinit-devel] Bug#716948: Bug#716948: initscripts: Removes bootlogd conf files even if bootlogd is installed

[Guillem Jover]

Hi!

On Mon, 2013-07-15 at 12:32:04 -0700, Steve Langasek wrote:
> Dpkg maintainers, could you please have a look at this?  I'm not sure if
> this is a dpkg-maintscript-helper bug, or expected behavior that will
> require bypassing dpkg-maintscript-helper to overcome.

> In initscripts 2.88dsf-42, a debhelper .maintscript rule has been added
> which does:
> 
>  rm_conffile /etc/init.d/bootlogd 2.88dsf-42 initscripts
>  rm_conffile /etc/init.d/stop-bootlogd-single 2.88dsf-42 initscripts
>  rm_conffile /etc/init.d/stop-bootlogd 2.88dsf-42 initscripts
> 
> In the maintainer scripts, this translates into rules such as:
> 
>  dpkg-maintscript-helper rm_conffile /etc/init.d/bootlogd 2.88dsf-42 initscripts -- "$@"
> 
> I would expect dpkg-maintscript-helper to know that these conffiles are no
> longer owned by the initscripts package, and therefore not remove them.  Is
> this a wrong assumption?

Yes, while suboptimal, this is the current dpkg-maintscript-helper
behavior, which is pretty basic and will not cover these kinds of corner
cases. It could well be considered a bug, but then I think the script is
a hack and a dead end, and I'm not really planning on wasting my time
working on its logic, instead I'd rather spend it improving the native
conffile support in dpkg proper. I might perhaps consider looking into
reviewing and applying tested patches if someone wanted to provide them,
but that's not a thrilling prospect either.

Thanks,
Guillem