On 05/05/31 17:20 -0400, Binand Sethumadhavan said ...
> On 31/05/05, Thaths <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > Debian. IIRC, the Debian Package Maintaners Policy Manual specifically
> > warn against package X meddling around with the configuration/files of
> > package Y.

The policy doesn't say this.  There are policy requirements on the
scripts for assumptions regarding controlling terminals, idempotency,
upgrade etc.  Lots of packages modify the configuration files installed
by other packages, and httpd.conf and resolv.conf are but two examples.

> So how does Debian handle the installation of say, webalizer, which
> requires changing httpd.conf? It doesn't bother and expects the user
> to add the required directives manually?

Package maintainers handle this in the [post/pre][inst/rm] scripts.  I
have seen instances where a maintainer may choose to leave a note in the
README.Debian file.  Some take the pains to write good scripts that do
the configuration automagically (prompting the user using debconf where
they think an input is necessary), and in some cases it is as easy as
dropping a config file in a conf.d directory which would be included by
the main config file with a wild card (apache2, exim4).

Sometimes when this becomes painful, there is a neat framework to handle
the configuration files.  The resolvconf package is a nice example, and
it helps the packages that would like to modify /etc/resolv.conf do that
sanely.

Giridhar

-- 
Y Giridhar Appaji Nag | http://www.appaji.net/


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