---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Dieter Adriaenssens <[email protected]> Date: 2017-02-05 11:44 GMT+01:00 Subject: Re: Improving documentation on conffiles in Debian Policy and Debian New Maintainers' Guide To: Stuart Prescott <[email protected]>
Hi Stuart, Thanks for the reply and apologies for the late response. On Mon, Dec 26, 2016 at 04:13:10PM +1100, Stuart Prescott wrote: > Hi Dieter, > > Thanks for the suggestions. > > > In section E.1 of Debian Policy[0], conffiles[1] are mentioned as a list > > of configuration files that are checked for changes by 'dpkg' during an > > upgrade. > > However, not only files in the conffiles file are checked, but > > automatically also every file in the /etc directory, as mentioned in the > > Debian New Maintainers' Guide [1]. > > Your assertion that all files in /etc are checked is not correct. dpkg only > checks the configuration files that the binary package has listed as > conffiles. > > However, by default, the debhelper build system (via dh_installdeb) > automatically lists all files that are going to be installed into /etc as > conffiles -- that might make it look like all files in /etc are checked but > the logic and control of the situation are reversed. The "by default" is > important here; files in /etc are added as conffiles only if the maintainer > does not take other action. Many packages include files in /etc that are not > conffiles but are handled in some other fashion such as using ucf. Thanks for the clarification, until now it was not clear to me what the exact role of dh_installdeb was. Learned something new here. :) > As a general point, be careful about whether you're talking about source > packages or binary packages. For source packages, dh_installdeb tool allows > you to have debian/conffiles inside your source package to control what is a > conffile, while otherwise everything in /etc will become a conffile in the > binary package. For binary packages, only the files listed in > control.tar.xz:conffiles are conffiles. > > (I suspect, this is actually the root of your confusion.) Yes, thanks for clarifying. :) > > 2) It also makes sense to move the two sentences in section E.1[0] on how > > the conffiles are formatted to the Debian New Maintainers' Guide [1], ie. > > : > > > > 'This file should be a list of filenames of configuration files needing > > automatic handling, separated by newlines. The filenames should be > > absolute pathnames, and the files referred to should actually exist in the > > package.' > > It might make sense to document this in the new maintainer's guide -- it > would certainly make sense to document this in dh_installdeb(1) where the > format of this file is not specified at all. Perhaps you could file a bug > against debhelper for that, suggesting a cross-reference to the deb- > conffiles(5) page? (It would also be good if the new maintainer's guide > could point at the documentation rather than duplicate it so that people > learn where these things are actually documented -- perhaps you could assist > with that too?) Sure, I'll open a bug to improve the dh_installdeb manpage. Kind regards, Dieter -- Kind regards, Dieter Adriaenssens
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