On Sat, Oct 31, 2009 at 05:30:55PM +0100, Alexander Watzinger wrote:
deborphan's keep file is located in /var/lib/deborphan. According to
the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard, /var/lib/ is for persistent data
modified by programs as they run, which isn't really the case for
deborphan.
The handling of deborphan's keep file through the options --add-keep,
--del-keep and --zero-keep does exactly fit to that description, as does
using editkeep, which uses these options, to alter the keep file.
I used Wikipedia to get the URL of the FHS: someone wrote packaging
systems metadata (in my opinion deborphan's keep file could be
categorized as such) as example for persistent data modified by
programs as they run. Although Wikipedia is no reliable source, it at
least shows that I'm not the only one with this opinion.
/etc seems like a better location for it.
I don't think the keep file is a configuration file. According to the
FHS these are used to control the operation of a program. One example
for such a file used by deborphan is one that allows to specify
deborphan's default options.
In Debian we do distinguish between conffiles and configuration files.
All conffiles are configuration files but not vice versa. These
conffiles are handled specially by dpkg. If you are able to convince me
(which I doubt), deborphan's keep file would not be a conffile but
a configuration file.
Our reason for wanting this change is that we backup /etc to keep our
server configuration but not /var/lib.
Data from dpkg, apt and probably also aptitude resists in /var/lib, as
does debfosters keepers file. You miss some IMHO important data when
you skip /var/lib in your backups. I would also backup
/var/cache/debconf, which is no database - but answering the same
questions again is time-consuming.
I leave the bug open for a while to let others or you the chance to
add comments and try to convince me.
Regards
Carsten
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