On Wed, 2009-10-28 at 09:39 -0700, Greg Stark wrote: > On Wed, Oct 28, 2009 at 7:33 AM, Alvaro Herrera > <alvhe...@commandprompt.com> wrote: > > Greg Smith escribió: > > > >> This sounds familiar...oh, that's right, this is almost the same > >> algorithm pgtune uses. And it sucks, > > It's also a blatant violation of packaging rules for Debian if not > every distribution. If you edit the user's configuration file then > there's no way to install a modified default configuration file. You > can't tell the automatic modifications apart from the user's > modifications. So the user will get a prompt asking if he wants the > new config file or to keep his modifications which he never remembered > making.
This is not quite accurate. What the Debian policy says is that local changes to configuration files must be preserved during package upgrades. You are free to implement this in a variety of ways. One way to do it is to mark the file a "conffile" with dpkg, and then dpkg will handle the upgrades. If you mark a configuration file a "conffile", then packages' maintainer scripts are not allowed to touch the file (because dpkg handles it). But this is irrelevant for the postgresql package, because postgresql.conf is not a conffile, primarily because it is created by the postgresql package's maintainer script in the first place (via initdb). Moreover, it is not illegal for a program or a routine that is explicitly invoked by a user to modify a configuration file (or a "conffile" even). The only policy is again packages' maintainer scripts (preinst, postint, prerm, postrm, for those reading along) modifying "conffiles" *automatically* during package installation or removal. So from a Debian packaging policy point of view, none of the schemes described so far appear to be disallowed outright. -- Sent via pgsql-hackers mailing list (pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-hackers
