Henning Makholm <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Scripsit Frank Küster <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > >> These variables can be changed by a configuration file, and some of them >> *must* be set. Now if a user refuses to accept the change that switches >> from VARTEXMF to TEXMFVAR (or TEXMFSYSVAR, actually), TeX can no longer >> work. > > You seem to assume that the *only* way to get this change into the > file is to forcibly discard all of the sysadmin's local adaptations > and install a pristine upstream version of the conffile.
No, of course there is an other way: dpkg offers an option to start a shell (or put itself in the background or whatever) to clear up the situation; or one can simply log in on a different terminal. But if the local admin doesn't want to do that, but delay merging the configuration file, there are only two possibilities: Either he accepts the new maintainer's version, or he refuses it. And the latter choice leads to a failure of the postinst script in some cases. It's only *some* cases; I think in the most important cases, the file isn't dpkg-managed (but ucf-managed), anyway, so we choose to forcibly introduce the variable name changes if the rest of the line was unchanged (or "recognizable"). But that cannot always be done, and in fact the reason why I decided to ask this is because a user had an old version of a conffile of an other package. The other package depends on tetex, and must recreate its format ("reinitialize") when tetex is updated - and made tetex's postinst fail. > Why do you want to deny the sysadmin the opportunity to do the changes > himself? I don't. All I do is request some support for the view that if he decides to do so, he should in fact do it before filing a bug; and if he files a bug that I can close or downgrade it to non-RC severity. Regards, Frank -- Frank Küster Inst. f. Biochemie der Univ. Zürich Debian Developer