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

[Steve Langasek]

On Mon, Jul 15, 2013 at 10:00:16PM +0200, Guillem Jover wrote:
> 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.

And improving the native support means what, exactly?  You can't assume that
an obsolete conffile should be removed on upgrade; some of these conffiles
are changing package owner, some of them need to be moved to a new location
on disk, some are being replaced by non-conffile config files, and some
should really be dropped.  There's no way for dpkg to know automatically
what the right thing to do is, that's why we have this in maintainer
scripts.

> 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.

I will look at fixing dpkg-maintscript-helper for this issue.

-- 
Steve Langasek                   Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS
Debian Developer                   to set it on, and I can move the world.
Ubuntu Developer                                    http://www.debian.org/
slangasek at ubuntu.com                                     vorlon at debian.org